Art der Publikation: Beitrag in Sammelwerk

How to Create Organization-Specific IT Impact Catalogs: A Method for Iterative Knowledge Specialization

Autor(en):

Hendricks, Frederik; Seufert, Sarah; Schütte, Reinhard

Titel des Sammelbands:

Proceedings of the European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern Conference on Information Systems (EMCIS 2026), im Erscheinen

Veröffentlichung:

2026

Volltext:

HowToCreateAnOrganizationalImpactCatalog.pdf

Vortrag zu dieser Publikation:

European, Mediterranean & Middle Eastern Conference on Information Systems (EMCIS 2026)

Zitation:

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Kurzfassung

Organizations invest heavily in IT systems yet frequently struggle to justify these investments because the expected benefits remain unspecified and thus not reached. A precondition for measuring the return on IT investments is a systematic prior identification of the impacts those systems are expected to produce. Existing impact catalogs provide a useful starting point but operate at a level of abstraction that prevents their direct application in organizational practice. What is missing is a method that guides the adaptation of generic catalog knowledge toward the specifics of a concrete organization. Drawing on a design science research approach, this article proposes a method for creating organization-specific IT impact catalogs through iterative knowledge specialization. Starting from a generic, process-centric organizational framework, the method incrementally incorporates knowledge about the IT system class, the industry, the company type, and ultimately the specific organization, terminating at the level of specificity at which concrete, observable, organization-specific impacts can be identified. The method is demonstrated through an application to an ERP system implementation at a wholesale company in the plumbing and heating sector. Interviews with organizational members and decision-makers provide evidence that the identified impacts materialize in practice. This contribution advances both the academic understanding of IT impact identification and the practical toolkit for benefit realization planning.