ABSTRACT:
THE PAPER THAT OPENS THIS ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL will play an important role in systematizing our field. As a follow-up to the DeLone and McLean IS Success Model, whose original version was published in MISQ and the updated version was published in JMIS, Stacie Petter, William DeLone, and Ephraim R. McLean present their Determinants of IS Success Model. The authors move from the dimensions of success to the factors that condition it. Based on their comprehensive analysis of the research literature, the authors identify the variables that influence IS success and integrate them into 15 success factors within five categories that have been consistently found to affect this success. This integration allows the researchers to identify the gaps in our knowledge and offer guidelines for the future work in the domain.
Among the factors identified in the preceding paper is the satisfaction of user expectations. In the next paper, Alexander Benlian empirically investigates the aspects of the congruence between the perceptions of users and those of IS professionals as a prerequisite to user satisfaction. Deploying several theoretical lenses, this work explains the nature and the effects of this alignment of perspectives, and the roots of the rather frequent misalignment. Aside from its contribution to the theory of user satisfaction, the work will be helpful to the managers who need to influence the forming of proper perceptions as a condition for harmonious collaboration.
The Special Issue on Multiple Dimensions of Value in Information Systems shows how the deployment of IS goes well beyond the creation of economic value. In their introduction, Guest Editors Robert O. Briggs and Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., discuss several dimensions along which IS contribute to the societal development and individual welfare, the dimensions that sometimes can be expressed as economic value, but often complement or surpass it. The seven papers included in the Special Issue, introduced to you by the Guest Editors, well illustrate this important point.
Vladimir Zwass
Editor-in-Chief