Seeking the "value" in IS business value research - an agenda for investigating synergies between socio-organizational change, IS capabilities change, and IS innovation

The business value of investments in Information Systems (IS) has been, and is predicted to remain, one of the major research topics for IS researchers. However, the fundamental question of the causal relationship between IS investments and firm performance still remains unexplained. We argue that this lack of causal explanations is one of the main reasons why the IS community still lacks a theory on IS business value. We further argue that deficiencies in research on synergies between socioorganizational change, IS capabilities change, and IS innovation take a responsible part in this regard. In order to re-activate researchers’ interest and activities in the central field of IS business value, this article provides a fresh, technoand socio-organizational perspective on the question of how IS create business value. In particular, the contribution of this paper is the provision of a condensed literature review, the identification of research gaps, and the suggestion of a research agenda, including research thrusts and related research paths.