Factors Influencing the Strategic value of IT: a Literature Review

This paper focuses on two research questions: (i) in management literature, how is the “strategic value of IT” understood, defined and measured? (ii) in management literature, what factors are identified as influencing the organization's capability of strategically leveraging IT? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a systematic literature review, based on keyword search and selective backward and forward search. We identified 106 writings (out of a set of reference lists including about 1700 writings, duplications included) as particularly relevant to our goals, and after full-text analysis we classified the reviewed contents in order to provide a synthetic answer to our research questions. We found that IT-enabled latent strategic capabilities are severely under-investigated by theory testing writings, and even IT-enabled competitive advantage, although often mentioned in theory-building papers, is not sufficiently subject to sound theory-testing investigations. Moreover, we found that researches focusing on IT management behaviors and capabilities are an emerging stream of studies, both for the fertile and still under-investigated issues implied, and for the direct relevance of this approach to the world of practice. Our literature analysis led to the identification of contradictory outcomes, under-investigated issues, lack of construct operationalization and lack of theoretical explanations: such outcomes are synthetically proposed as a starting point for further researches.