The successful realisation of value (i.e., benefits) from information technology (IT) investments has consistently been reported as one of the major organisational challenges because it generally falls short of expectations. From a project perspective, we examine which factors are necessary to realise IS developments' anticipated value. To better understand the role of benefits management (BM) determinants and their impact on successful benefits realisation, we apply partial least squares (PLS) technique on data collected from 456 individuals. We find that currently the greatest potential to increase the probability of successful benefits realisation lies in the improvement of the ability to continuously review the status of benefits realisation in projects. On the other hand, we find that providing project stakeholders with incentives to align their individual goals and interests towards the common objective of realising planned project benefits is perceived to be not very effective.

In 1996, the Cranfield benefits management (BM) process model was developed as a response to organizations’ dissatisfaction with the results of information systems and information technology (IS/IT) projects. In contrast with traditional project management dimensions, such as time, cost, and quality, BM emphasizes the need to identify, plan, realize, and review benefits, particularly by means of business changes. The extant literature presents several BM frameworks and methods, signaling its character as an evolving discipline. Despite this progress in research, most studies still report dissatisfyingly low BM adoption rates in practice. We aim to understand why BM is still rarely used in practice by classifying the literature with a multi-perspective framework. We find the BM literature rather unbalanced, as studies on how to conduct BM are common, but papers that investigate concepts such as the adoption/usage and context of BM in organizations are highly underrepresented. We conclude that the BM discipline still has open fields and white spots, and needs to gradually change direction.

Developing organisational strategies and achieving set goals is one of the most researched and taught topics in business today. Although management disciplines such as project management are often quoted as important means of implementing and realizing organizational strategies through enabling the realization of successful projects, there is considerable confusion in organizational literature on how this happens. Grounded upon a questionnaire based survey of 456 managers and using component-based structural equation modelling technique, we find that portfolio management (PPM) and benefits management practices enable an organisation to achieve planned strategic goals. While portfolio management does this directly, benefits management achieves this indirectly by reinforcing PPM with the assurance that planned project benefits will be delivered. Furthermore, we find that alignment of Business and IT increases the effectiveness and maturity of the management concepts. We also find that in order to develop mature benefits management practices organizations need to be committed to declaring benefits management as a strategically important discipline and investing relevant resources in the adoption and diffusion of the practices throughout the organization.

Although organisations continue to develop and implement information technology (IS), the successful realisation of benefits from such investments has consistently been reported as one of the major organisational challenges, because it generally falls short of expectations. From a project perspective, we examine which factors are necessary to realise IS developments' anticipated value. We use the existing literature and field study results from 29 organisations to collect a pool of items, which are merged in a questionnaire to help understand the mechanism of successful IT value realisation in organisations. We use the questionnaire to collect data from 456 individuals involved in IT projects; on the basis of this, we conduct exploratory factor analysis to determine the factor structure present in the data, and confirmatory factor analysis to validate the derived factor structure. Results indicate the presence of three specific benefits management capabilities and four contextual factors that facilitate effectiveness of these benefits management capabilities in realising the planned value of IS developments. The primary implication of our findings is the identification of the principal levers to derive IT-enabled value.

Even when employees use project management methodologies (PMMs), the question regarding the nature of their use remains, i.e. are they using PMMs in a dedicated manner? While empirical research states that the usefulness of a methodology is the single most important determinant of its acceptance and use by actual users, studies have not examined which methodology use outcomes are more important for which type of people regarding determining their committed PMM use behavior. In our study, we develop a theoretically and practically complete, as well as relevant, typology of the costs and benefits of using a methodology and study the effect of personal traits such as psychological needs. We develop and test a conceptual model, using a sample of 2,651 participants, which shows that individual needs determine which costs and/or benefits have a greater effect on individuals’ committed use of a PMM.

Even though practitioners and researchers generally agree that pro- ject management methodologies are very useful in managing IT-related pro- jects, organizations are rarely able to motivate their staff to use them. Even when employees use these methodologies, the question of how they are being used still remains. To better understand the way in which employees use project management methodologies, we develop the construct "resistant use." Applying a diffusion of innovations perspective, we develop a conceptual model to exam- ine how methodology attributes interact with users psychological needs to in- fluence a user's resistant use behavior. Based on a sample size of 2645 partici- pants, and using the structural equation modeling technique, we find that a us- er's need for achievement and need for cognition moderate the impact of pro- ject management methodologies' attributes (relative advantage, complexity, and compatibility) on their resistant usage behavior.

Despite the overwhelming advantages of using system development methodologies (SDMs), organizations are rarely able to motivate their staff to use them. Even when employees use these methodologies, the question regarding the nature of their use remains, i.e. how are they using them? To better understand the way employees use SDMs, we conceptualize usage into three distinct constructs: committed, compliant, and resistant use. Applying a diffusion of innovations perspective, we develop and test conceptual models using the structural equation modeling technique, based on a sample size of 1474 participants, to examine how attributes of an SDM (relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and image) influence employees' usage behavior.

Despite the advantages of using IS methodologies, they are often rejected by actual users. Consequently, researchers have repeatedly attempted to understand why individuals accept certain methodologies while rejecting others. In order to differentiate what has been done from what needs to be done in research, a systematic review of academic studies that examine the acceptance of IS methodologies by actual users was conducted. This review revealed 19 articles. We found that the studies were either: (a) descriptive, (b) focused on specific determinants, or (c) applied a holistic approach, examining methodology acceptance from a number of dimensions. Furthermore, while cognitive aspects have received considerable attention, none of the publications studied the effect of habits, emotions and the personal characteristics of individuals. We also examined the studies with respect to the reported research practices, and thereby identified areas of improvement. Based upon our findings, we developed a research agenda to guide future studies on this crucial subject. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Despite organizations’ substantial investments in information systems and information technology (IS/IT), the successful realization of appropriate benefits is still often considered a major organizational challenge. Benefits management (BM) aims at resolving this issue and has become increasingly popular in recent years. Although several papers have been published in this domain, they mainly focus on descriptive research endeavors. Prescriptive research dealing with design science for holistic BM is still scarce. At the same time, BM approaches in practice are still immature and are often unsuccessfully implemented. These gaps motivate our research, which aims at developing a design theory that represents the core aspects of effective BM implementations. Based on an exploratory field study, we first analyze the issues that inhibit BM implementations in practice. We find that BM often suffers from unclear accountability for benefits realization and organizational resistance to change. Based on our findings, we inductively derive a set of meta-requirements that ultimately lead to eight design principles and testable propositions explaining how these principles tackle the challenges associated with BM. Finally, in two iterative design cycles, we conduct interviews with subject-matter experts to validate and refine our design principles. Our research helps organizations locate, understand, and correct flaws in their BM implementation. Moreover, our design theory extends the nascent body of knowledge on BM.

Employee portals are collaborative information systems that are utilized by many companies to improve information exchange, communication, and employee collaboration, as well as to better support their business processes. Although some studies investigate single aspects of portal success, the critical success factors of how employee portals help their users become more productive have to date not been fully explored. To understand the antecedents of realizing employee performance gains though employee portals, we propose and validate a model of factors based on the human-computer interaction literature, particularly to better understand heterogeneity. Accordingly, we apply the finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) approach to uncover different segments of employee portal users and thereby provide a differentiated and more complete segment-specific picture of antecedents of employee portal utilitarianism. Our analysis indicates that the aggregate global model hides the existence of meaningful system user segments that are more homogenous in the productivity drivers. While some users are primarily concerned with ergonomicity, others users’ productivity is the result of functionality. The future research steps we outline include the finding of exploratory variables that characterize different user groups and therefore further improve interpretability.

Despite the benefits of using an IT project management methodology, only a handful of organizations are actually able to make their staff use such methodologies. Hence, organizational managers must identify and apply user influence tactics (UIT), to ensure adequate and appropriate use of these methodologies within their organizations. In order to understand the complex nature of UITs and their effects on employees, we use needs theory and develop and test a conceptual model based on a pre-test sample of 65 participants to address the following issues: 1) the need for an abstract taxonomy of UITs to group together similar tactics so as to reduce complexity as well as increase generalizability and results comparability, and 2) the need to examine innate desires of the employee, since the likelihood that a specific UIT will be effective in motivating an individual to use a methodology depends upon the characteristics of the potential adopter as well as that of the methodology.

Despite the overwhelming advantages of using an IS project management methodology, organisations are rarely able to motivate their staff to use them: Consequently, this lack of methodology usage by individuals fails to deliver the expected advantages of better quality, control, less time and effort. We analyse the determinants of an individual‘s intention to use IS project management methodology in order to enable organisations to engineer those that meet the needs of actual users and are really used by them. Results from an exploratory field study conducted in a service organisation, are used to construct a conceptual model. Based upon this research model, we posit that: a) value of a methodology, b) workgroup influence, c) self-beliefs, d) organisational characteristics, and e) previous habits influence intention to use a methodology. Additionally, we find that the strength of these relationships depends upon the needs of an individual and the degree of prior experience they have in using similar methodology.

Employee portals are systems that provide employees with the timely and relevant information that they need to perform their duties and to make efficient business decisions. Although their use is widespread, the question on how benefits of these portals are materialized for their users has not been fully answered yet. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the utilitarian value of employee portals for individual users. Therefore, we develop a second-order hierarchical conceptual model whose core structure is founded on the theoretical behavioral science concepts embedded in the diffusion of innovations theory, theory of planned behavior, and the research stream of engineering psychology. We empirically test the model by means of component-based structural equation modeling. For this, we collected 5,783 employees' responses in a survey of 19 companies. Our results indicate that amongst the theorized factors, the quality of support provided to users is the most important factor that affects employee portal related performance gains. Furthermore, collaborative functionalities of an employee portal acts as a critical mediator that channels benefits arising as a result of efficient support and ergonomic employee portal design towards increasing goal oriented breadth of employee portal usage. Finally, we find that with increasing knowledge-intensity of employee tasks, ergonomicity of an employee portal and breadth of use has a stronger effect on performance gains.

Although organisations continue to make substantial investments in information systems and information technology (IS/IT), the successful realisation of value (i.e. benefits) from such investments has consistently been reported as a major organisational challenge. From a project perspective, this paper examines whether benefits management (BM) practices can be considered a viable approach to achieve such anticipated value. Drawing on a field study conducted by investigating BM practices in 29 organisations as well as the BM literature, we derive a structural equation model that is tested using data collected from 456 individuals. Our data analysis, by means of partial least squares, finds that specific BM competencies positively impact benefits realisation success (BRS). Furthermore, the findings suggest that the development of effective BM competencies are facilitated by an alignment of business and IT processes reflected in the constructs a) business process knowledge, and b) businessIT communication. We also find that incentives negatively influence the positive effect of benefits review practices in realising project benefits. Collectively, the results have important theoretical and practical implications, as they provide quantitative evidence of how IS/IT investments should be managed to successfully realise benefits. We expect our research to spur organisations to instil a shared understanding of how IS/IT relates to the business and vice versa within their project teams, which will intensify BM’s positive effect on BRS.

Despite the overwhelming advantages of using an IT project management methodology, organizations are rarely able to motivate their staff to use them in a dedicated manner. While empirical research states that the usefulness of a methodology is the single most important determinant of its acceptance and use by actual users, studies have not examined which methodology use outcomes are more important for which type of people in which situations. Our study is a step toward filling the gap in methodology evaluation, development, and adoption literature, which to date has not developed a theoretically and practically complete as well as relevant typology of the costs and benefits of using a methodology and has also not studied the effect of personal traits such as needs. We develop and test a conceptual model, using a pre-test sample of 65 participants, that holds that individual needs determine costs-benefits have a bigger effect on individuals’ committed use of a methodology.

Despite the overwhelming advantages of using IS development and management (ISDM) methodologies, organisations are rarely able to motivate their staff to use them. The resulting lack of methodology usage by individuals fails to deliver the expected advantages of better quality, control, less time, and less effort in IS development projects. We analyse the technical as well as non-technical aspects of an individual's use of ISDM methodologies, in order to enable organisations to engineer those that meet the needs of actual users and are actually used by them in a productive manner. We construct a conceptual model, based upon which, we posit that: technical methodology attributes such as relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, demonstrability, visibility, triability, and reinventability influence an individual's methodology usage behaviour. We also propose that the strengths of these relationships depend on non-technical, deeply rooted psychological needs of the people.

The realization of benefits from IS/IT investments has consistently been reported as one of the major challenges of organizations. This paper reports on the findings from an exploratory field study on how benefits management success ultimately contributes to better IS/IT exploitation. A total of 34 semistructured interviews were held within 29 organizations. The study applies resource-based theory to examine the benefits management resources required and the process through which organizations translate such resources into benefits management competencies. The result is a framework offering items under three dimensions to outline how benefits management ultimately contributes to better IS/IT exploitation. The dimensions are: (1) benefits management resources, (2) benefits management capability and (3) contextual factors. The analysis finds that organizations develop benefits management capability in various stages: (1) benefits measurement competency, (2) benefits planning competency, and (3) benefits implementation competency. The results of our study also reveal that resources alone are not sufficient for successful benefits management. Organizations also need to establish the contextual factors: business/IT alignment, integration of benefits management into management processes and top management support.