Information systems in organisations

This research explores two separate but related lines of enquiry - the business value of individual applications and the social and organisational impact of information systems. From this research it is clear that information systems have immense potential to change organisations. The conventional view focuses on the value that organisations can obtain through greater efficiency or new activities made possible by specific applications. But experience suggests that many organisations fail to gain the value expected. This research was started with the aim of attaining a greater understanding of the business value that information systems could offer organisations and finding ways by which organisations could assess and realise this value. The research has adopted a variety of methodological approaches and this integrating paper assesses the choices made and locates the papersin relation to the literature on information systems research methodology. The nine research papers taken together demonstrate that is business value is a complex concept and difficult to measure in practice. The research finds that the business and organisational environments are key factors in achieving the business value to be reaped from the range of benefits that each type of IS application offers. The research also demonstrates why IS evaluation practice continues to pose problems for researchers and practitioners. This integrating paper situates the work within the relevant literature on information systems research, assesses the contribution of the research papers to information systems research and concludes with a discussion of future research that flows from this work