【正文】 unfortunately, this approach often leads to hightly subjective judgements and is likely to err on the side of accepting bad projects. Kaplan, recognizing this problem in the context of evaluating puter integrated manufacturing (CIM), proposed using a variant of DCF。 Young39。 　　　　一個(gè)對(duì)金融機(jī)構(gòu)的長(zhǎng)期研究表明，不同的機(jī)構(gòu)的效率和表現(xiàn)也不同。其決定的因素有以下一些其中的一個(gè)因素就是對(duì)投資的決定和管理。s financial services management consulting division. However, not all the stories are negative. New IT systems are playing a vital role in reshaping the delivery of financial services. For example, new putertelephony integration(CTI) technologies are transforming call center operations in financial institutions. By investing in technology, more and more institutions are moving operations from highcost branch operations to the telephone channel,where the cost per transaction is onetenth the cost of a teller interaction. This IT investment not only reduces the cost of serving existing customers, but also extends the reach of the institution beyond its traditional geographic boundaries.　　In this paper, we utilize detailed case studies of six retail banks to investigate several interrelated questions:　　 processes do banks utilize to evaluate and manage IT investments?　　 well do actual practices align with theoretical arguments about how IT investments should 　　　 be managed? 　　 impact does that management of IT investments have on performance?How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part Two) For the first question, we develop a structured framework for cataloging IT investment practices and then populate this framework using a bination of surveys and semistructured interviews. We then pare the results of this exercise with a synthesis of the literature on IT decision making to understanding how practices vary across firms and the extent to which this is consistent with best practices as described in previous literature. Finally, we will pare these processes to internal and external performance metrics to better understand which sets of practices appear to be most effective.　　To make these parisons concrete, we examine both the general decision process as well as the specific processes used for two recent IT investment decisions :the adoption of puterbased home banking (PC banking), and the development of the corporate web site. These decisions were chosen because they were recent and are related but provide some contrast。 a firm calculates the present value of the investment using all the ponents that can be quantified and then pares this prliminary value to the qualitative list of other benefits and costs. In other cases, where the evaluation is make difficult because of future uncertainties (. market growth and acceptance。 Clemens (1991) terms this the trap of the vanishing status quo.　　For the quantative financial evaluation, most IT evaluation methods have their roots in traditional capital budgeting procedures such as discounted cash flow analysis(DCF). However, while these techniques can work well for projects where costs and benefits ar well defined (. purchasing offthe shelf software in pursuit of operational cost savings), it is increasingly recognized that simple application of DCF approaches is not sufficient for IT investments. This is because much of the value of modern IT investments is likely to be difficult to quantify such as revenue enhancements or cost savings through improved customer service, product variety, or timeliness. One monly used stategy is to value nonquantifiable benefits at zero, although this strategy will systematically bias project evaluations to unnecessarily reject projects. 　　Recognizing the limitation of the DCF approach, several alternative approaches have been proposed. One method is to base tghe case entirely on qualitative analysis。 some firms have very high investments but are poor performers, while otheres invest less but appear to be much more successful. Brynjolfsson and Hitt found that as much as half the returns to IT investment are due to firm specific factors.　　One potentially important driver of differences in IT value, and of firm performance more broadly, is likely to be the decision and management peocessed for IT investments. Horror stories of bad IT investment decisions abound. Consider the example of the new strategic banking system(SBS) at Banc One(American Banker 1997). Banc One Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. agreed last year to end their joint development of this retail banking system after spending an estimated $175 million on it. As stated in the American Banker article, SBSwas just so overwhelming and so plete that by the time they were getting to market, it was going to take too long to install the whole thing, said Alan Riegler, principal in Ernst amp。 the typical bank spends as much as 15% of nonintereste expenses on IT. A persistent finding of research into the performance of financial institutions is that performance and efficiency vary widely across institutions. Nowhere is this variability more visible than in the outes of the IT investment decisions in these institutions. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of IT investment decision processes in the banking industry. The purpose of this investigation is to uncover what, if anything, can be learn