Factors that influence information technology use during post-implementation : A literature review

Abstract

Organizations invest in Information Technology (IT) expecting to derive organizational performance benefits from their investments. However, most of the investments do not result in expected benefits because either the implementation fails, or the IT implemented gets misused, underutilized or abandoned during post-implementation. Research suggests that for an organization to derive benefits from its IT investments, users in the organization should actively use the IT for an extended period. Consequently, researchers have investigated factors that can influence IT-use during post-implementation; howbeit, the factors are dispersed across individual publications. Drawing on a review of 68 empiri-cal articles on IT-use, this paper collates and synthesizes factors that influence IT-use during post-implementation. The factors consist of support structures, support properties, and support activities, and do manifest at different levels. Relationships among the factors and IT-use are discussed. Further, this study collates various perspectives on IT-use to improve our understanding of the different ways in which users engage with IT during post-implementation. Finally, the implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed. In general, this study contributes to research on the derivation of business value of IT from IT investments, and specifically, to research on IT-use during post-implementation.