Measuring information systems succes : a comment on the use of perceptions

Information System success is difficult to measure directly. Because of the influence of non-controllable variables, it actually seems to be impossible to directly compute or determine the contribution of Information Systems to organizational performance, or to overall organizational effectiveness. As an alternative, perception of system success is often used as a surrogate measure. However, this raises the question of the validity of this surrogate measure. In this chapter, the authors describe a survey aiming to investigate the validity of this surrogate measure. Results show that there is reason to doubt the usefulness and validity of surrogate measures for objective system success.