Justifying the Intangibles: Review of Information System Justification Research
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Towards a New Architecture of Knowledge: Big Data, Culture and Creativity |
| Citation | |
| Keywords | Justification; intangibles; taxonomy; information system; review |
| Description | Despite rich research in the field of IS justification, it seems that this effort yields insufficient outcomes. Organizations still struggle with finding reasons why to invest (or not to) in IS and what benefits such investment will bring, and researchers report lack of knowledge of justification methods. Therefore, this study reviews the past IS justification research with the attention on intangible benefits. Mainly literature review studies were analysed. Review articles were narratively reviewed with focus on types of methods and possibilities for further research. Finally, according to analysis, taxonomy of methods was designed and further research directions were suggested. This study is the first attempt of justification methods taxonomy since Irani and Love (2002) study. This research identified five categories of IS justification methods: financial, strategic, analytic, multi-criteria, process. The ability of most methods to justify intangible benefits of information systems is rather low or non-existent. With current justification methods, companies are unable to properly justify information systems that provide many intangibles. Therefore, instead on focusing on developing other new methods, more effort should be directed into gaining more insight into the practice of justification process in order to understand the reasons why companies struggle to evaluate intangible benefits of information systems. |