An Economic Theory Framework for Measuring Information Systems Implementation Success

An important issue in the area of information systems strategy is the still unresolved problem of how to create an effective feedback loop between the evaluation of information systems implementations and the strategies which the systems were designed to fulfill. Much MIS research is devoted to measuring IS implementation success, but popular dependent variable measures are often incomplete, inaccurate, or inefficient and seem to yield very little analytical information to map back into the ongoing IS strategy development process. This paper discusses three key points: 1) the paper will trace measurement concerns due to historical linkages between the specific implemented information technologies and the associated measure of IS success; 2) second, the paper will explore the rift between the quantitative and qualitative measures of information systems (IS) implementation success; and 3) finally, the paper will conclude by describing an economic theory perspective of IS implementations that may contribute to improved valuations of IS success in the future. Including the use of the reference discipline of economics in the evaluative toolkit permits the design of a more comprehensive framework to use for the analysis of IS success, which may improve the feedback mechanism between information systems strategy and its implementation