Tracing the Roots of the Organizational Benefits of IT Services

The study of the organizational impact of information technology services on the value generation process in organizations has a story that spans over several decades. In this stream of research, that goes under the name of IT value, scholars debated over years on the potential existence of a positive link between the presence of IT services and the organizational performance. The field of IT value is ample and continuous. Considering these aspects this paper contributes to the literature by proposing a quantitative analysis of the IT value literature. Our study complements existing studies on the value of IT services, which followed qualitative approaches, focusing on the summarization and systematization of existing literature. This paper presents the results of a longitudinal bibliometric study of the IT value literature based on 435 papers published from 1990. Our analysis shows a growing trend of publications and citations, the existence of a common theoretical foundation for the research stream identified by the most influential and co-cited sources. Our analysis identified the existence of three core research areas inside which most of the IT value discourse is developed. We concluded our research formulating some considerations regarding future IT service value investigations.