Pre-determinants of Implementing IT Benefits Management in Norwegian Municipalities: Cultivate the Context

Abstract

The concept of benefits management addresses explicated practices to realize benefits from information technology investments. However, a minority of organizations have implemented those. We explored which pre-determinants affect the implementation of benefits management practices by conducting a Delphi process in the Norwegian municipality sector. The experts represented governmental organs, general management, and municipal service managers. They identified 59 pre-determinants of potential importance. However, the experts reached no significant consensus on the relative importance of the pre-determinants. Instead, we suggest that the identified pre-determinants should be holistically and contextually scrutinized. As a basis for that, we categorized the pre-determinants further into the areas of government-level policy, municipality-level policy, benefits management process, and benefits management toolbox of methods and techniques. Our study highlights areas of explicated managerial policies and actions in the municipal and inter-municipal contexts, in addition to the task of finding out a set of useful practices as such.