DOI: 10.4018/IRMJ.2019100101 Information Resources Management Journal Volume 32 • Issue 4 • October-December 2019 Copyright © 2019, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 1 Selecting the Most Desirable IT Portfolio Under Various Risk Tolerance Levels Yu-Hsiang (John) Huang, Drake University, USA Yu-Ju (Tony) Tu, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan Troy J. Strader, Drake University, USA Michael Shaw, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Ramanath (Ram) Subramanyam, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA ABSTRACT To better assist decision-makers (e.g., enterprise executives) in selecting the most desirable IT portfolio, this study proposes a new IT Portfolio Efficient Frontier model that incorporates the decision-maker’s risk tolerance levels. The proposed model, built on portfolio optimization along with experimental design and simulation data, considers three IT portfolio scenarios: even distribution-based IT portfolios, uneven distribution-based IT portfolios, and dominant IT portfolios. Our findings show that the IT portfolio efficient frontiers derived from both an even distribution-based IT portfolio and an uneven distribution-based IT portfolio have a relatively positive relationship between IT portfolio risk and return. Our findings also indicate that if IT investments are part of a dominant IT portfolio, an inflection point of the IT portfolio efficient frontier appears under the decision-maker’s medium risk tolerance level, and the most desirable IT portfolio is generated when a decision maker’s risk tolerance level is medium or higher. KeywoRDS Efficient Frontier, Enterprise Executives, IT Portfolio Management, Risk Tolerance Levels INTRoDUCTIoN In 2018, global information technology (IT) spending grew by 6.2% to $3.7 trillion US dollars according to the latest forecast by the research firm Gartner, Inc. (2018 https://www.gartner.com/ newsroom/id/3871063). Chan et al. (1997) found that the “fit” between information systems (IS) and business objectives is significantly associated with the performance of a firm. In fact, evidence increasingly shows that investment in IT can produce value at a variety of organizational levels. At the firm level, research has demonstrated that IT investment translates into profitability (e.g., Mithas et al., 2012). Meanwhile, a number of IS researchers have drawn attention to the concept of IT Portfolio Management (ITPM), a system for managing the total IT-related investments within an enterprise (Weill and Vitale, 2002), and ITPM is expected to improve the performance of IT investment (Jeffery and Leliveld, 2004). With regard to a firm’s IT resources, IT portfolios can be thought of as a bridge that connects projects to the firm as a whole. The concept of ITPM is similar to the concept