Digital Publications
from The Information Economics Press

Summary

In their work the corporate Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are continually confronted with disagreements about the scope as well as the effectiveness of their work. Although many of such arguments are phrased as technological, organizational, governance, security and accountability matters they ultimately resolve into questions of economics. The application of information economics, especially as revealed in the form of corporate budgeting, has now become one of the principal means for defining the practice of corporate information management.

The report ranks corporations based on the Information Productivity (IP) index, a metric that I derived to measure the value added to a corporation’s profitability by information-centered tasks. In effect, the IPI recognizes the added value of information management.

The most important assets of a corporation are people. The management of information needed to support those people now greatly exceeds the costs of capital. If you consider a corporation’s sales, general administrative expenses to be the “cost of transactions, for getting products or services to customers” then those expenses exceeded the costs of capital in the U.S. in 2002 by a factor of more than three to one, according to published financial statements. Focus is placed on “transaction cost analysis” that has so far escaped attention from researchers because “information technology” has tended to be treated as synonymous with “information management”. Transaction cost analysis offers empirically verifiable answers to many of the questions that corporate executives are demanding when information professionals ask for money.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

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