Open Access

Florian Hänsch

• The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to contribute to the field of Finance and Information Management with a particular focus on the financial ex-ante valuation of IT projects. A sound and comprehensive ex-ante valuation of IT projects is a central success factor in order to foster the value creation goal of a company in accordance with the principles of value-based management. In this context, financial valuation approaches facilitate well-founded IT investment decisions by enhancing the quantitative information basis for companies and decision makers. After discussing the significance and central role of modern IT for the economic success of companies, central challenges regarding the financial valuation of IT projects in an ex-ante perspective are presented. More precisely, these challenges concern (i) the valuation of intangible benefits, (ii) the consideration of interdependencies between IT projects, and (iii) the valuation of IT projects in digitized value networks.The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to contribute to the field of Finance and Information Management with a particular focus on the financial ex-ante valuation of IT projects. A sound and comprehensive ex-ante valuation of IT projects is a central success factor in order to foster the value creation goal of a company in accordance with the principles of value-based management. In this context, financial valuation approaches facilitate well-founded IT investment decisions by enhancing the quantitative information basis for companies and decision makers. After discussing the significance and central role of modern IT for the economic success of companies, central challenges regarding the financial valuation of IT projects in an ex-ante perspective are presented. More precisely, these challenges concern (i) the valuation of intangible benefits, (ii) the consideration of interdependencies between IT projects, and (iii) the valuation of IT projects in digitized value networks. Regarding the first challenge, the research papers focus on analyzing and discussing the potentials and the applicability of financial approaches for the ex-ante valuation of intangible benefits. Regarding the second challenge, the research paper focuses on analyzing the influence of stochastic interdependencies on the risk position of IT projects and the associated investment decisions. Regarding the third challenge, the research papers focus on examining the valuation of IT projects in innovative IT-enabled business models in the service sector respectively in the manufacturing industry.…