The role of IT application orchestration capability in improving agility and performance

This paper investigates how IT application orchestration – a dynamic capability encapsulating a firm’s ability to refresh its application portfolio through a process of building, buying, and retiring IT applications – impacts firm performance. We propose a conceptual model in which the effect of IT application orchestration on firm performance is mediated by process agility. We further propose that a firm’s strategic orientation moderates the effect of IT application orchestration capability on process agility. Analysis of data from an international survey of IT executives supports our proposed hypotheses. This research contributes to the emergent literature on dynamic capabilities by proposing and testing a theory of how IT application orchestration capability affects agility and firm performance.     

Inside the adaptive enterprise: an information technology capabilities perspective on business process agility

Recent innovations in utility computing, web services, and service-oriented architectures, combined with a growing array of IT skills, have improved firms’ ability to be more agile in responding to change. Using the resource-based view of the firm, prior research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the question becomes how to configure IT resources to prepare for, or react to, change. In this paper, we posit that managerial IT capabilities based on IT-business partnerships, strategic planning, and ex-post IT project analysis lead to the development of technical IT capabilities associated with a flexible IT infrastructure which in turn drives agility or a firm’s ability to react to change in its products and markets. Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we find that managerial and technical capabilities affect agility. In further testing, we reveal that in a stable setting, technical IT capabilities are more important to agility than managerial IT capabilities, while in a dynamic setting, the opposite is true. Thus, for firms operating in volatile markets, effective models of managerial IT governance are essential for delivering superior agility or adaptiveness.

Exploring the relationships between IT competence,innovation capacity and organizational agility

Business environments today are characterized as being very dynamic and hyper competitive. Organizations in these environments have to be agile in order to adapt their strategies and actions to be successful. While it is recognized that information technology can enable firms to be agile, there is a limited understanding of the mechanisms through and the contexts in which Information Technology (IT) enhances agility. This study examines two key antecedents of organizational agility, namely the IT competence of a firm and its innovation capacity and, examine their independent and joint effects on agility. We test our model using data collected from large firms in the US. The results provide strong support for our model. We found that firms with superior IS capabilities coupled with an aggressive IT investment orientation create digital platforms that enable them to be agile. We also found that the innovation capacity of the firm has a positive relationship with organizational agility and that firms with higher innovation capacity are better able to leverage their digital platforms to enhance agility. Our results indicate that organizational agility has a strong positive impact of firm performance. We interpret and discuss these results and their theoretical and practical implications.     

Realising platform operational agility through information technology–enabled capabilities: A resource‐interdependence perspective

Intensifying competition in recent times requires business‐to‐consumer (B2C) e‐commerce platforms to develop operational agility for competitive advantage. Despite the agreement on an increasing competitive landscape, the process for realising information technology (IT)‐driven operational agility on e‐business platforms has received little scrutiny. Through an investigation of M.com, a leading multisided online retailing platform in China, this study provides a clear thesis of resource interdependencies and IT‐enabled capabilities forged during operational processes to realise operational agility. Our investigation, observations, and reflections from practice substantiate a model of how a platform like M.com cultivates IT‐driven resource‐interdependent competencies and capabilities tantamount to realising operational agility. The model shows how IT enables three capabilities—localised, synergistic, and optimised—which reflect the effective co‐ordination of three resource interdependencies (pooled, sequential, and reciprocal) during M.com's complex operations and processes, and explicates the consequences. For research, we postulate that IT‐enabled operational agility in complex organisational forms, cultivated through the development of resource‐interdependent capabilities to deliver effective sensing and response mechanisms, forms effective strategies for the B2C platform in dynamic marketplace conditions.     

Information technology, operational, and management competencies for supply chain agility: Findings from case studies

Given the growing emphasis on the need for supply chain agility to sustain competitive advantage, this study explores the impact of the relationship between supply chain competence and supply chain agility on firm performance. Although the influence of supply chain agility on firm performance has been acknowledged, this study further articulates the relationship from the perspective of inter-organizational collaboration. We develop a conceptual model based on the resource-based view and employ a multi-case study method in this exploratory research. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing the difference between supply chain agility and supply chain competence and their impact on firm performance. This study contributes to the growing body of conceptual and empirical literature on supply chain agility and adds to the understanding of the complexity of supply chain competence.     

The role of IT in organizational innovation – A systematic literature review

Information technology (IT) is broadly recognized as an important element in organizational innovation, however there has been relatively little integration of Information Systems (IS) research on the role of IT in organizational innovation. Such integration is particularly important in view of recent calls to examine the evolving ontological nature of IT, wherein IT artifacts are now shaping physical reality. We systematically examine innovation-related literature published in the leading IS journals in the period between 2009 and 2020 and we identify and summarize the core theoretical discourses in this domain. We find that extant literature largely examines the role of IT in innovation at a high level of abstraction, focusing on IT investments and IT capabilities, and consequently precluding granular insights on who, what, when, where, how, and why in relation to organizational innovation. To address this limitation and to provide a structuring lens for future research, we develop the organizational innovation system framework which posits that actors, IT artifacts, actions and organizational context are the key elements in organizational innovation systems that require more granular examination to yield deeper insights on how information technology contributes to organizational innovation. We re-examine the literature through the organizational innovation system lens and we identify gaps in extant research. We also outline potential directions for expanding the scope of future research.     

Outsourcing success in the eye of the beholder: Examining the impact of expectation confirmation theory on IT outsourcing

Expectations have been found to exert a significant impact on client satisfaction in outsourcing projects and have been utilized to understand how individuals accumulate experiences and develop beliefs. In this study, we examine the impact of expectations on IT outsourcing success. Although extant studies identify multiple potential expectations, the expectations construct is often viewed as unidimensional with expectations examined at a general level. Furthermore, our multidisciplinary literature review indicates a gap in the literature regarding which expectations to employ. We therefore draw upon the Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) to determine a parsimonious set of expectations that combine to influence outsourcing success. Through an international survey of chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior IT outsourcing practitioners, we demonstrate the impact of expectations on IT outsourcing success. Moreover, we evidence that the should, minimally acceptable, and intolerable expectations can be used to predict outsourcing success. This study contributes to the outsourcing literature, specifically, and the multidisciplinary ECT literature, generally, by evaluating the multi-faceted nature of expectations. The results have practical implications for clients and vendors engaged in IT outsourcing and those who engage in expectation management.     

Enhancing enterprise agility by deploying agile drivers, capabilities and providers

Agility is perceived as the dominant competitive vehicle for all organizations in an uncertain and ever-changing business environment. When embracing agility, important questions must be asked. What precisely is agility and how can it be measured? How can one adopt the appropriate agile enablers to develop agility? How can one effectively assist in enhancing agility?For an enterprise to achieve agility, it is critical to create an effective integrated procedure within the business that coordinates and ensures that the agility providers can satisfy the agility capabilities and cope with drivers, ultimately transforming all of these attributes into strategic competitive edges. However, the existing literature on enterprise agility has failed to sufficiently address the relevant perspectives in such analyzes. The relationship matrix in the quality function deployment (QFD) method provides an excellent tool for deploying important concepts and linking processes. This report suggests a new agility development method for dealing with the interface and alignment issues among the agility drivers, capabilities and providers using the QFD relationship matrix and fuzzy logic. A fuzzy agility index (FAI) for an enterprise composed of agility capability ratings and a total relation-weight with agility drivers was developed to measure the agility level of an enterprise. This report also describes how this robust approach has been applied to develop agility in a Taiwanese information technology (IT) product and service enterprise. This development project revealed that the proposed framework and procedures can enhance the agility of an enterprise as well as ensure a competitive edge.     

A typology of user liability to IT addiction

To date, information systems (IS) research mainly has provided a monolithic view of information technology (IT) use, considering it to be a desired behaviour with positive outcomes. However, given the dramatic increase in the use of technology during the last few years, susceptibility to IT addiction is increasingly becoming an important issue for technology users and IS researchers. In this paper, we report the results of a study that focuses on identifying variations in user liability to IT addiction, which reflects the susceptibility of individual users to develop IT addiction. First, a review of the literature in different disciplines (e.g. health, psychology and IS) allows us to better understand the concepts of IT addiction and liability to addiction. The literature review also provides an overview of the antecedents and consequences associated with IT addiction. Then, building on the analysis of 15 in‐depth interviews and 182 exploratory open‐ended surveys collected from smartphone users, we apply the concept of liability to addiction in the IT use context and propose a typological theory of user liability to IT addiction. Our typology reveals five ideal types; each can be associated to a user profile (addict, fanatic, highly engaged, regular and thoughtful ). Building upon both the extant literature and our results, we put forth propositions to extend the theoretical contributions of the study. We finally discuss the contributions and implications of our paper for research and practice.     

Literature review: Understanding information systems strategy in the digital age

IT/IS strategy is of central importance to practice and many well-developed lines of research have contributed to our understanding of IT/IS strategy. However, throughout the last decade, digitalization has fundamentally transformed the business world and put into question traditional strategy wisdom. As information technologies are the driver of this digital transformation, we can expect an even more fundamental change in IT/IS strategy thinking. To verify this expectation, we undertook an in-depth, extensive review of the academic literature on this topic. Our review, which is time-framed to the years 2008–2018, distils five different directions in the development of IT/IS strategy research. It also identifies a shift in how IT/IS strategy is defined and investigated over this period. Moreover, we present an emerging debate on how digitalization challenges traditional IT/IS strategy wisdom. As this debate is still in its infancy, we take it further by entering into the larger discussion on digitalization, including digital innovation, digital ecosystems, and digital transformation. Building on this, we derive at deeper insights on how IT/IS strategy could, should, or should better not be understood in the digital age.     

Information Systems Offshore Outsourcing: An Exploratory Study of Motivations and Risks in Large Spanish Firms

Prior research has documented that IT investment increases market returns. Economic theories predict such returns to be recognized in accounting profitability; this relationship remains ambiguous in prior literature. We reexamine the relationship between IT investment and firm profitability. Our approach is unique in that we examine complementarities between distinct IT components. We document that a firm’s investments in IT components exhibit different impacts on its profitability conditional on the level of investments in complementary components.     

Analyzing the impact of a firm's capability on outsourcing success: A process perspective

We investigated the effect of a firm's resource capabilities and interaction processes on the success of IT outsourcing. Grounded in available literature on outsourcing relationship and process theory as well as a resource-based view of the IT resource capability, a conceptual model was composed to examine the causal structure of capability, process, and relationship in IT outsourcing. We identified the firm's resource capability factors and, based on the premise that relationship intensity should be affected by the IT outsourcing process, we developed a first-order factor analysis of resource capabilities in the interactions between the outsourcer and provider. Results of empirical testing using responses from 267 IT outsourcing project teams in Korea supported most of our hypotheses. The integration of corporate IT resource and capability theories with social exchange theory distinguishes our research from that of others, who have generally treated these theories separately.     

How information technology influences opportunity exploration and exploitation firm’s capabilities

Understanding how and why some firms have proficiency in exploring and exploiting opportunities is a cutting-edge research problem. Our central thesis is that information technology (IT) performs a key role in firms’ opportunity exploration and exploitation. We test the proposed theory using partial least squares path modeling on a combination of survey and secondary data from 203 Spanish firms. We find that: (1) IT infrastructure provides the foundation to build business experimentation and the flexibility to sense and explore business opportunities; and (2) IT-enabled business flexibility helps firms to develop the operational proficiency to exploit opportunities and increase their performance.     

An empirical examination of a process-oriented IT business success model

The value of information technology (IT) to modern organizations is almost undeniable. However, the determination of that value has been elusive in research and practice. We used a process-oriented research model developed using two streams of IT research to examine the value of IT in business organizations. One stream is characterized by examining how IT and non-IT variables affect other so-called IT success variables. The second stream is commonly referred to as IT business value, defined as the contribution of IT to firm performance. The resulting research model is referred to in our paper as the IT business success model. Data was collected from 225 top IS executives in fairly large organizations to empirically examine several hypotheses derived from theory concerning the causal nature of the IT business success model. A set of measures for the IT business success model was developed through an intense investigation of the IT literature. The measures were tested for validity and reliability using confirmatory factor analysis. The hypotheses that resulted from past research and conceptually illustrated in the research model were assessed using structural equation analysis. The implications of these findings and the limitations of the study are discussed in an effort to contribute to building a process-oriented theory base for IT business success at the organizational level of analysis.     

Change Management Support to Preserve Business–Information Technology Alignment

Organizations introduce changes to adapt themselves to the extremely changing context. These changes often impact business and information technology (IT) domains. In most of the cases, the scope of the organizational elements in these domains requiring adaptation is not well defined, leaving out elements, what can lead to misalignment. Thus, it is important to know the impact scope in order to perform a full adaptation. When reviewing the literature in the business–IT alignment field, we found that there are no works dealing with this aspect. To fulfill this lack, we carry out a systematic review of change management works and find out a set of clues. We apply them to the business–IT alignment field and as a result propose a change management metamodel, a set of rules and an algorithm to forecast impact scope and adaptations. To operationalize our contributions, we propose a software and demonstrate its applicability through a case study.     

IT alignment strategies for customer relationship management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relationships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction. A CRM strategy involves the entire enterprise and is employed on an ongoing basis. Despite the fact that CRM projects incur huge expenditures, a large percentage fails to achieve the stated objectives. Failure in CRM initiatives could be avoided if a firm's CRM strategies are intelligently linked with its employees, customers, channels, and IT infrastructure. In this paper, we focus on those linkages, particularly on the linkages between an organization's CRM strategies and its IT infrastructure. Even though the relationships between IT and business strategies have been extensively explored in the IT alignment literature, prior research has not addressed how a firm's CRM strategies are aligned with its IT infrastructure. In this paper, we investigate the issues relating to CRM-IT alignment based on an in-depth case study of a large, well-known Internet travel agency.     

Manufacturing in the Digital Age: Exploiting Information Technologies for Product Realization

Information technology (IT) is both the key enabler for future manufacturing enterprises and a transformer of organizations and markets. By reducing barriers to collaboration, compressing lead time, eliminating physical movement, and enriching decision-making, IT helps manufacturers achieve their goal of meeting customer needs better, quicker, and cheaper. By providing global reach and easy connectivity, information technology has fostered cooperation while increasing market competition, and heightened customer expectations. Advances in computer and communication technologies combined with rapid changes in organizations have created new opportunities for exploiting information technologies in the entire product realization process. This paper explores these opportunities, and identifies promising directions for both basic and applied research. We first review important trends in organizations, markets, and information technologies—from increasing customer involvement and opportunistic organizational alliances to global reach and connectivity, enterprise integration, and virtualization. Adopting a process viewpoint of the product realization cycle, we translate these trends into high-impact IT applications in design and operations that offer rich potential for applied research and development. Underlying these applications are four broad classes of intelligent information processes—intelligent search, diagnosis and prognosis, collaboration, coordination, and negotiation, and understanding and learning. And, software agents provide an ideal platform to implement these processes. We briefly review developments in these basic research fields, and identify necessary scientific advances that are most important from the manufacturing perspective. Our goal is to synthesize streams of thought from many related disciplines in engineering, science, and management, and develop a framework for examining how information technologies can facilitate and influence manufacturing.     

Sustaining and advancing IT careers: Women’s experiences in a UK-based IT company

This article contributes to a growing literature on women in IT occupations. Against a national and international context of women’s longstanding and continued under-representation in senior professional roles in IT, our study at organizational level tells the story of women’s career experiences in a specific UK-based IT company in relation to its culture, processes and practices. Utilising a concept from the gender literature – Acker’s (2006) ‘inequality regimes’ – the study bridges the gap between the gender and IS literature and feminist theorising in order to shed light on the lack of gender diversity in IT. The article specifically shows how components of organizational inequality regimes, namely, ‘organizing processes’, ‘legitimacy’ and ‘visibility’ of inequalities combine and interact to produce and maintain gender inequality in the IT workplace. The implications of this in the sector more generally are discussed.