Papers by Elisabeth Frisk
European Conference on Information Systems, 2007
Researchers have long recognized that IT investment evaluation is a complex socio-technical proce... more Researchers have long recognized that IT investment evaluation is a complex socio-technical process. Some scholars even consider it as a socio-political process based on the argument that evaluations are conducted from the vantage points of the stakeholders. While anecdotal evidences of these arguments are plenty, empirical support based on large samples and rigorous methodologies are rare in the current IT evaluation literature. In this study we present the results of a structural equation analysis of a sociopolitical model of using survey data collected from 312 Swedish companies. Our results show that organizational power and political factors play a significant role in forming the managers' intention to conduct formal IT investment evaluation, which in turn predicts the actual use of the formal evaluation methods and frameworks. While perceived usefulness still significantly influences intention, as previously reported, the power and political factors are shown to influence the action directly with or without the mediation of intention, supporting the strong influence of organizational politics in the IT investment evaluation process.
European Conference on Information Systems, 2006
In this study we attempt to understand why formal evaluations of IT investment projects have not ... more In this study we attempt to understand why formal evaluations of IT investment projects have not yet become an organizational routine. Using survey data gathered from business and IT managers in Sweden, we tested the research hypotheses about the factors influencing the attitudes and behaviour of managers towards using formal evaluation methods based on the theory of planned behaviour. We found that the intent to use formal evaluation methods in an organization is determined by the attitudes of the managers towards the formal methods, the common beliefs of the organization about the formal methods, and the perceived ability to perform formal evaluations. Interestingly, we found that the attitudes toward formal methods are determined mostly by the perceived usefulness of the methods and not by the perceived ease of use of these methods, suggesting that the decision to use formal methods is most likely based on rational analyses rather than individual preferences. We also found that awareness and selfefficacy contribute to the use of formal methods via influences on organizational beliefs and perceived ability to perform evaluation tasks. These findings provide some interesting managerial implications for advocating the use of formal methods in organizations.
Abstract: The evaluation of IT investments has gained renewed interest among management and acade... more Abstract: The evaluation of IT investments has gained renewed interest among management and academics alike, as IT today represents a substantial financial investment for many organizations and also is a critical component of numerous businesses. Despite many different attempts in the literature to find solutions for and explanations to how IT evaluation should be conducted, researchers are still far away from generally agreed upon and accepted common concepts. Since there obviously is a lack of consensus on the subject of IT evaluation our purpose has been to learn from and to create an overview of prior IT evaluation research and in order to present a possible future research agenda. The review includes papers that were published between 1994-2004 in the Electronic Journal of Information Systems
International Perspectives on Aging
A growing older population is placing new demands on the welfare system. Elder care has been crit... more A growing older population is placing new demands on the welfare system. Elder care has been criticised for its lack of resources, competence, or respect for older people. Caregiving needs to be transformed and based on older people’s real needs and what they perceive as important. However, both older people and service organisations have to be capable of participating in new development processes. Design thinking (DT) has emerged as a field of research that provides tools and processes that are helpful for supporting innovations and new ways of thinking about problems. The concept of capability (Nussbaum M. Creating capabilities: the human development approach. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011), and how design researchers have embraced it, is discussed. The results from two case studies show that DT can support increasing capabilities among both service recipients and service providers when developing new services and digital solutions. The DT proc...
Title: Evaluation as Designing – Towards a balanced IT Investments Approach Language: English
Investments in Information Technology affect key stakeholders, such as employees, owners, custome... more Investments in Information Technology affect key stakeholders, such as employees, owners, customers, and suppliers. According to prior studies, many of the Information Technology investments fail to deliver the expected results because stakeholders’ interests and motivations were not adequately addressed. Based on data collected from 70 companies in Sweden, we examine how consideration of key stakeholders in the pre-investment phase may influence the business value obtained from investments in Information Technology. Our findings indicate that a stakeholder view influences the choice of methods and also, at least indirectly, the chances of achieving business value. Nevertheless, a strong key stakeholder consideration does not automatically guarantee successful IT investments, if not backed by proper evaluation methods. Therefore future research may explore the issue of how a portfolio of methods could be assembled considering a company’s unique stakeholders’ characteristics and inte...
IT investment evaluation has been the subject of many academic studies and often rated as one of ... more IT investment evaluation has been the subject of many academic studies and often rated as one of the top concerns of IT managers. While many studies have focused on the issue of how to evaluate IT projects, we are more interested in understanding why formal IT evaluation methods and techniques are used or not used in various organizations. In this paper, we present the preliminary findings of a large scale, multi-country survey on the usage of formal IT evaluation methods in organizations. Our results show that, despite the fact that most IT managers consider IT investment evaluation as a critical issue in IT management, only about one third of IT investment projects are subjected to some formal evaluation processes. What is even more interesting is that only about 10% of the organizations surveyed claim to use formal quantitative evaluation methods such as ROI, NPV, IRR, or C/B, while over half of the organizations report that their IT investment decisions are made based on experie...
Changes in land use/land cover (LU/LC) are a major factor driving global environmental change, es... more Changes in land use/land cover (LU/LC) are a major factor driving global environmental change, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. As a result, expansion of agriculture and urbanization is occurring in ecologically fragile lands. This paper analyzed and assessed land use/land cover changes in an agricultural center Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, object-based classification technique (OBC) using Landsat images for seven years (1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009, and 2015) were used for LU/LC analysis. The urban growth type for Tabuk was measured using Urban Growth Analysis Tool (UGAT) within a GIS. The study found an increase in urban areas from 48 km 2 in 1985 to 315 km 2 in 2015. A significant increase of 61% in agricultural land, from 1985 (112 km 2 ) to (577 km 2 ) in 2015. This expansion is occurring at the expense of the barren land with a loss of 768 km 2 . An overall classification accuracy ranged from 94% to 97% across all images. The urban growth type for Tabuk was determined as 72% to be of the extension-type over the study period, with urban areas expanding in a direction towards the northwest and west area. Assessing spatial and temporal LU/LC change has aided to understand the impacts of expanding agriculture and urban areas. The LU/LC maps could aid government planners and decision-makers to analyze and manage agricultural and urban growth.
Business Systems Research Journal, 2014
There is an on-going discussion within management accounting research regarding how to work with ... more There is an on-going discussion within management accounting research regarding how to work with performance measures. In the process of developing new forms of performance measurement the task of choosing business metrics is central. This process is closely connected to the implementation of IT solutions.
IT investment evaluation has been the subject of many academic studies and often rated as one of ... more IT investment evaluation has been the subject of many academic studies and often rated as one of the top concerns of IT managers. While many studies have focused on the issue of how to evaluate IT projects, we are more interested in understanding why formal IT evaluation ...
IRIS, 2004
The evaluation of IT investments has gained renewed interest among management and academics alike... more The evaluation of IT investments has gained renewed interest among management and academics alike, as IT today represents a substantial financial investment for many organizations and also is a critical component of numerous businesses. Despite many different attempts in the literature to find solutions for and explanations to how IT evaluation should be conducted, researchers are still far away from generally agreed upon and accepted common concepts. Since there obviously is a lack of consensus on the subject of IT evaluation our purpose has been to learn from and to create an overview of prior IT evaluation research and in order to present a possible future research agenda. The review includes papers that were published between 1994-2004 in the Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management and Journal of Enterprise Information Management. The overview was created with the help of a research framework that builds on findings from prior theoretical reviews on IT evaluation. Our review indicates that the area of IT evaluation is complex and despite vast research there still are many challenges for future research. We propose the following agenda for future research: Find consensus on important concepts for evaluating IT, investigate the role of IT portfolios in the evaluation process, investigate how an interpretive IT evaluation approach could be accomplished, investigate how life-cycle evaluation could be accomplished, examine what multiperspective criteria that are needed in the evaluation process
Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Information Systems, 2007
Researchers have long recognized that IT investment evaluation is a complex socio-technical proce... more Researchers have long recognized that IT investment evaluation is a complex socio-technical process. Some scholars even consider it as a socio-political process based on the argument that evaluations are conducted from the vantage points of the stakeholders. While anecdotal evidences of these arguments are plenty, empirical support based on large samples and rigorous methodologies are rare in the current IT evaluation literature. In this study we present the results of a structural equation analysis of a sociopolitical model of ...
In this study we attempt to understand why formal evaluations of IT investment projects have not ... more In this study we attempt to understand why formal evaluations of IT investment projects have not yet become an organizational routine. Using survey data gathered from business and IT managers in Sweden, we tested the research hypotheses about the factors influencing the attitudes and behaviour of managers towards using formal evaluation methods based on the theory of planned behaviour. We found that the intent to use formal evaluation methods in an organization is determined by the attitudes of the managers ...
Management Accounting Research
Management Decision
PurposeThis study aims to examine the application of design thinking to complex decision-making p... more PurposeThis study aims to examine the application of design thinking to complex decision-making processes in local government and to link the design thinking to the theoretical work of leading thinkers in decision-making.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses multiple case studies, including non-participant observation, group discussions, semi-structured interviews, presentations and questionnaires.FindingsFor complex decisions, design thinking can contribute to more effective decision-making by expanding the range of solutions considered, people consulted and involved, sources of data/information and decision tools as well as in achieving buy-in to the eventual decision.Research limitations/implicationsThe principal limitations include that this is one study in one country and in the public sector. There were some practical problems with external factors disrupting two of the cases, but these do not affect the findings. The principal implication is that by adopting a design thi...
Management Decision
Purpose Evolving digital technologies continue to enable new ways to collect and analyze data and... more Purpose Evolving digital technologies continue to enable new ways to collect and analyze data and this has led some researchers to claim that skillful use of data analytics and big data can radically improve a company’s performance, but that in order to achieve such improvements managers need to change their decision-making culture and to increase the degree of collaboration in the decision-making process. The purpose of this paper is to create an increased understanding of how a decision-making culture can be changed by using a design approach. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents an action research project in which the authors use a design approach. Findings By adopting a design approach organizations can change their decision-making culture, increase the degree of collaboration and also reduce the influence of power and politics on their decision-making. Research limitations/implications This paper proposes a new approach to changing a decision-making culture. Practical...
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Papers by Elisabeth Frisk