Organisational Factors and their Roles in Creating IT Business Value

Research on business value of information technology (IT) has recognised that organisational factors play critical roles in affecting how IT impacts on firm performance. However, the conceptualisation of organisational factors and their relationship with IT and firm performance has not been extensively developed in the literature. There is neither a coherent way of specifying organisational factors nor a consensus on how IT and organisational factors interact to affect IT business value. This paper, based on a change management perspective, understands IT adoption as a change that is likely to trigger significant changes in organisational factors, which in turn may affect IT business value either positively or negatively. Building on previous work in IT business value and change management, this paper presents a cross-disciplinary study of the relationship between IT and organisational factors. It classifies and maps organisational factors identified in the IT business value studies into four categories for the purpose of knowledge accumulation. It also develops propositions to further conceptualise the relationship between organisational factors and IT business value. Based on the analysis, this paper offers an explanation of how IT and organisational factors interact to affect business value and concludes with a discussion of the findings and future research.