How to Design an IT Department? A Review and Synthesis of Key Characteristics

The design of an IT department received much attention during the last years. CIOs and IT managers still have a great interest how they can set up their IT department. Previous research discusses various key characteristics or even delivers archetypes of the IT department. However, a synoptic view of the screws CIOs can set, is still missing. Subsequently, the aim of the present paper is to synthesize existing literature in order to gain an overview about the key characteristics of an IT department. To that end, a systematic literature review was conducted. The paper contributes a set of nine characteristics grouped along three dimensions: organizational, technological, and human dimension. The nature of the IT artifacts deployed by the IT department as well as the real net output ratio of the IT function were identified as important characteristics, which were not addressed by existing typologies of IT departments

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, techno- and 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