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Despite significant progress in evaluating the productivity payoffs from information technology (IT), the inability of traditional firm-level economic analysis to fully account for the intangible impacts of IT has led to calls for a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to measuring IT business value. In response to this call, we develop a process-oriented model to assess the impacts of IT on critical business activities within the value chain. Our model incorporates corporate goals for IT and management practices as key determinants of realized IT payoffs. Using survey data from 304 business executives worldwide, we found that corporate goals for IT can be classified into one of four types: unfocused, operations-focus, market-focus and dual-focus. Our analysis confirms that these goals are a useful indicator of payoffs from IT in that executives in firms with more focused goals for IT perceive greater payoffs from IT across the value chain. In addition, we found that management practices such as strategic alignment and IT investment evaluation contribute to higher perceived levels of IT business value.

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In recent years, chief information officers have begun to report exponential increases in the amounts of raw data captured and retained across the organization. Managing extreme amounts of data can be complex and challenging at a time when information is increasingly viewed as a strategic resource. Since the dominant focus of the information technology (IT) governance literature has been on how firms govern physical IT artifacts (hardware, software, networks), the goal of this study is to extend the theory of IT governance by uncovering the structures and practices used Downloaded by [New York University] at 12:10 09 June 2015 142 TAllON, RAMIREz, AND ShORT to govern information artifacts. Through detailed interviews with 37 executives in 30 organizations across 17 industries, we discover a range of structural, procedural, and relational practices used to govern information within a nomological net that includes the antecedents of these practices and their effects on firm performance. While some antecedents enable the speedy adoption of information governance, others can delay or limit the adoption of information governance practices. Once adopted, however, information governance can help to boost firm performance. By incorporating these results into an extended theory of IT governance, we note how information governance practices can unlock value from the ever-expanding mountains of data currently held within organizations.Key woRds and PhRases: big data, data growth, information artifact, information governance, information life cycle management, information management, information risk, information value, IT governance.IT [information technology] does matter, but not because of hardware or even standard commercial software. It is because the intelligent and innovative application of information solves business problems and creates customer value at high speed, low cost, and the right scale. To put it simply, it's not about the box; it's about what's inside the box. (Broadbent et al. [4, p. 10] in reply to Carr's "IT Doesn't Matter" [8]).wiTh The adVenT of whaT is colloquially TeRmed The network, computer, or information age, there is growing recognition among business and information systems (IS) executives that data, or more precisely, information, may be the only inimitable IT resource that can create a sustainable competitive advantage [27,39,48]. Industry surveys show that the volume of raw data stored in corporate data centers is doubling in size every other year, with some industries, most notably health care, doubling in size annually [25,44]. As data is transformed into information for decision making, practitioners describe how an organization's ability to realize value from its information is based, in part, on how information is governed over its life cycle [24]. Based on prior studies by Khatri and Brown [18], Kooper et al. [23], and Weber et al. [51], we define information governance as a collection of capabilities or practices for the creation, capture, valuation, storage, usage, control, access,...

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