Moving IS Project Control Research into the Digital Era: The “Why” of Control and the Concept of Control Purpose

The control of information systems (IS) projects is central to creating and capturing value from digitalization. However, the current understanding of IS project control is too restrictive and not well attuned to the digital era, in which collaborative value creation in open-ended digital innovation and transformation efforts is critical to firm competitiveness, ecosystem evolution, and societal advancement. Reviewing earlier research, we find that the dominant view of IS project control emphasizes value capture/appropriation and virtually ignores value creation. To address this shortcoming, we introduce the concept of control purpose (why) and advocate for broadening control activities to encompass the two control purposes of value appropriation and value creation. This implies that practitioners need to strategically decide on and actively manage the balance between different purposes of control activities. By doing so, they will be better equipped to achieving success in digital innovation and transformation initiatives.

• 저널Information Systems Research · 30(4) · 1387–1401
• 토픽Big Data and Business Intelligence · Management Information Systems
• DOI10.1287/isre.2019.0867
• 저자Martin Wiener, Magnus Mähring, Ulrich Remus, Carol Saunders, W. Alec Cram