A Case Study on IT Investment Decision-Making in the Educational Sector: A Contextualist Perspective

This study endeavors to understand the decision-making process on information technology investment in the context of the educational sector. Much research regarding IT investment emphasizes the financial and operational of decision-making, there has been relatively little research concerning how contextual factors influence the IT investment decision-making process. In attempt to address this research gap, this study employs a contextualist approach to investigate how an educational institution does in practice when making IT investment decisions.esearch findings suggest that the nature of decision-making in an IT investment can be described as an interpretation by project teams. Furthermore, the study revealed the influence of an IT champion and the force of an IT culture during the IT decision-making process.he theoretical contribution arises from extending contextualist approach to the field of decision-making on IT investment. The practical contribution lies in illustrating the importance of IT champions and IT culture in the decision-making. Empirically, this study has significant value for MIS researchers by highlighting the contextual issues that affect the decision-making on IT investments.