Impact of meta-analytic decisions on the conclusions drawn on the business value of information technology

Authors:
Serkan Ada;Raj Sharman;Prasad Balkundi
Affiliations:
Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University, Kahramanmaras, Turkey;Department of Management Science and Systems, School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo, United States;Department of Organization and Human Resources, School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo, United States
Venue:
Decision Support Systems
Year:
2012

Citing 17
Cited 0

Investment in information systems and the financial performance of the firm

Information and Management
The use of meta-analysis in MIS research: promises and problems

ACM SIGMIS Database
Information technology and economic performance: A critical review of the empirical evidence

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Information Technology Investment and Firm Performance: A Meta-Analysis

HICSS '04 Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 8 - Volume 8
Measuring Information Technology Payoff: A Meta-Analysis of Structural Variables in Firm-Level Empirical Research

Information Systems Research
An analysis of communication mode in group support systems research

Decision Support Systems
A semantic approach to monitor business process

Communications of the ACM - The semantic e-business vision
The productivity impact of information technology across competitive regimes: The role of industry concentration and dynamism

Decision Support Systems
Enhancing business performance via vendor managed inventory applications

Communications of the ACM - Surviving the data deluge
A model to develop effective virtual teams

Decision Support Systems
IT Assets, Organizational Capabilities, and Firm Performance: How Resource Allocations and Organizational Differences Explain Performance Variation

Organization Science
The contingent effects of management support and task interdependence on successful information systems implementation

MIS Quarterly
Review: information technology and organizational performance: an integrative model of it business value

MIS Quarterly
Information technology and the performance of the customer service process: a resource-based analysis

MIS Quarterly
Turnover of information technology professionals: a narrative review, meta-analytic structural equation modeling, and model development

MIS Quarterly
The contingent effects of training, technical complexity, and task interdependence on successful information systems implementation

MIS Quarterly
Estimating the effect of common method variance: the method-method pair technique with an illustration from TAM research

MIS Quarterly

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Meta-analysis is a quantitative methodology that allows for summarizing the results of primary research studies in a field to provide new insights in terms of the phenomenon observed or the outcomes reported. This paper attempts to answer the fundamental question, ''Do methodological decisions in a meta-analytic study affect the conclusions drawn from that study?'' Specifically, this paper examines the effects of meta-analytic decisions when applied to the business value of information technology (BVIT) research stream. A closer examination of the variation in the methodological decisions informs us that, with each different decision alternative, we are examining slightly different phenomenon. The findings reveal that study outcomes do change, depending on the meta-analytic decisions that are tested. In other words, methodological decisions matter. Based on the data from 99 primary studies and 531 effect sizes, we tested seven hypotheses, in the BVIT research stream, using a comprehensive set of different methodological conditions. We find support for two findings that are consistent across all the different conditions. First, investing in information technology (IT) is positively associated with the firm's performance. We also find that large firms get more benefits from IT than small firms. These and the overall findings suggest that researchers should be cognizant of their methodological decisions, as they may be observing the phenomenon under different boundary conditions with different methodologies.