Our study has interesting implications for IS research and
management. It provides a framework for future empirical
research on the business value of various IS interoperability
architectures, frameworks, methods and standards, which is based
on the well-established balanced scorecard approach; also, this
framework allows a comparison of the business value generated by
various IS interoperability architectures, frameworks, methods and
standards with the business value generated by the development
of various types of IS (which are regarded as the main ICT value
generators). Furthermore, the strength of the effects of adopting
such standards on financial, operational and innovation performance
of firms indicates that future research on IS business value
should take into account the levels of interoperability that firm’s
ICT infrastructures provide as highly important variables. With
respect to IS management practice, our conclusions indicate that it
is necessary to put strong emphasis not only on developing the
functionality and capabilities of firm’s IS of various types, but also
on establishing interoperability of them with the ones of other
cooperating firms, taking into account the high business value that
IS interoperability generates. However, since IS interoperability is
an infrastructure, which facilitates and drives various advanced
and highly beneficial business practices (such as the ones
discussed in Section 2), the level of business value it generates
depends on the extent of exploiting the above capabilities offered
by IS interoperability for introducing these practices. But this is out
of the control of IS management, as it is responsibility of other
departments’ management to decide on the introduction or not of
such practices. Therefore IS management should develop good
relations and systematic collaboration with the management of
the other departments, so that they can examine together the
advantages and disadvantages of introducing such practices by
exploiting the capabilities offered by IS interoperability. Finally, in
order to maximize IS interoperability business value IS managers
should select and adopt appropriate standards characterized by
extensive ‘depth and breadth’ (i.e. cover all required business
documents and elements) and also wide applicability.