Design and Construct IT Performance Architecture: Settle the IT Productivity Paradox from Critical Realism

This article conceptualizes Information Technology (IT) performance architecture with dynamic performance process and performance structure, and try to settle the IT productivity paradox from critical realism. Two assessment principles are presented: that IT performance assessment procedures should include in the dynamic implementation process in which IT performance are produced by unique individual enterprises, and that assessments should tap IT systems that are possessed by the individual enterprises being assessed and that causally contribute to their overt implementation experiences and actions. The limitations of traditional IT performance assessment strategies based on between-enterprises performance metrics are discussed inlight of these principles. The article then outlines an alternative strategy in which performance architecture are designed and constructedin dynamic procedure that is sensitive to the potentially idiosyncratic performance of individual enterprise. The authors argue that IT system performance assessment can be considered under the IT performance architecture.