Dan N. Stone

SYNOPSIS:

All approaches used to evaluate the impact of information Systems (IS) on organizational productivity contain assumptions (i.e., untested beliefs) and implicit values. Methodological choices for evaluation are intermixed with assumptions and values. As a consequence, there is no perfect way of knowing the effects of an IS. Instead, the "results" of an IS evaluation are highly dependent upon the assumptions and values of evaluators. This article highlights the implicit assumptions and explicit hypotheses of common IS evaluation practices and recommends strategies for making better evaluation method choices. These strategies include acknowledging tradeoffs, using triangulation, and making evaluative assumptions explicit. The paper concludes by suggesting that IS evaluation research could be improved by greater attention to and understanding of the limiting assumptions of alternative evaluation methods.