Proposition of an Economic Theory Based Model (MAITEF) to Guide to Effective Firm-Level Information Systems Investments Decisions

The discussion about the effectivity of Information Systems (IS) investments often leads to the central question about the possibility of accurately measuring the business benefits of the IS implementations. Instead of identifying what kind of benefits are measurable and what are not, this work proposes a model (MAITEF) to reveal ex-ante effective IS investment opportunities at the firm level, based on the managerial economics theory, and grounded on the simple thesis that applying IS at the firm level, to solve economic preexistent inefficiencies, automatically will lead to effective results on those investments. By applying the MATIEF, it is possible to improve the decision process by enhancing the perception of value, since it helps the identification of the business situations where the inefficiencies can be observed and so IS application is desired. The study also presents the main results of the model’s pre-test performed to provide an example of its potential.