The impact of information systems on user performance: A critical review and theoretical model

Abstract

With the recent growth of applied information systems (IS) in business organizations, investigating IS impact on user's performance and productivity is essential for both practitioners and researchers. Early efforts concentrated on the identification of factors that facilitated IS use. This produced a long list of items that proved to be of little practical value. It became obvious that, for practical reasons, the factors identified had to be formalized into a model in such a way as to facilitate analysis of IS use. Thus, in this study we are exploring the similarities and differences among various IS models with a goal of developing a combined model with more explanatory power to better understand IS impacts on end user performance. A proposed model is presented linking information quality, system quality, user characteristics and task technology fit to evaluate the impacts of IS through ease of system use and usefulness on user's performance. The current study consolidates three models that have previously been validated separately in IS. Evaluated together, these models can provide a better understanding of the way in which IS influences user performance in a broader variety of circumstances.