The Realisation of IS Business Value: A Value-Reflexive Perspective

The business value of Information Systems (IS) is one of the most prominent topics in IS research and the collective effort of scholars interested in this topic has offered a thorough understanding of the organisational effects of IS investments. However, the organisation-level view obscures how IS business value emerges from individual-level IS use. This analytical blind spot reduces the plurality of IS business values that users realise through IS use to organisation-level outcomes. We fill this blind spot by theorising about how IS business value is realised through individual-level IS use. Building on the findings of a case study, we theorise the relationships between users’ valueception of IS, their IS use and the realisation of IS business value through this use. Our theorising advances knowledge on IS business value realisation at the individual level and shows that individual-level IS use realises more than one IS business value. This insight into the plurality of IS business value opens the door for further value-reflexive investigations. Our theorising offers analytical vocabulary that future studies can utilise to examine and explain phenomena of value realisation through IS use.