UNDERSTANDING USER EVALUATIONS OF INFORMATION-SYSTEMS

Organizations spend millions of dollars on information systems to impr ove organizational or individual performance, but objective measures o f system success are extremely difficult to achieve. For this reason, many MIS researchers (and potentially MIS practitioners) rely on user evaluations of systems as a surrogate for MIS success. However, these measures have been strongly criticized as lacking strong theoretical u nderpinnings. Furthermore, empirical evidence of their efficacy is sur prisingly weak. Part of the explanation for the theoretical and empiri cal problems with user evaluations is that they are really a measureme nt technique rather than a single theoretical construct. User evaluati ons are elicited beliefs or attitudes about something, and they have b een used to measure a variety of different ''somethings.'' What is nee ded for user evaluations to be an effective measure of IS success is t he identification of some specific user evaluation construct, defined within a theoretical perspective that can usefully link underlying sys tems to their relevant impacts. We propose task-technology fit (TTF) a s such a user evaluation construct. The TTF perspective views technolo gy as a means by which a goal-directed individual performs tasks. TTF focuses on the degree to which systems characteristics match user task needs. We posit that higher task-technology fit will result in better performance. Further, we posit that users can successfully evaluate t ask-technology fit. This latter proposition is strongly supported in a survey of 259 users in 9 companies.