Assessing the importance of industry in the adoption and assimilation of IT: Evidence from Italian enterprises

We analysed the role of industry in determining the diffusion and business value created by IT. Data was collected for this purpose by surveying 192 large enterprises in Italy. Our research revealed three findings. First, in the material services and non-hi-tech manufacturing industries, firms had a relatively limited adoption of IT, resulting in little business impact. Second, firms’ IT spending behaviour depended on their industry type and not on their IT capabilities. However their capabilities were more important than industry in explaining why firms achieved benefits from IT adoption that depended on the previous accumulation of IT resources and other capabilities. Third, industry type determined the degree to which IT affected profitability and its effectiveness in helping firms to defend their competitive advantage. Specifically, the slower the adoption of IT in an industry, the greater its impact on the firm's profitability.The implications of these findings for managers and policy-makers are discussed.     

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.     

Realizing business value of agile IT applications: antecedents in the supply chain networks

This research develops a framework for organizational value creation from agile IT applications. Based on the four themes in the business value research—business process perspective, complementarities, application level of analysis, and extent of use—three antecedents (organizational fit, process assimilation, and network adoption) are identified as pre-requisites for realizing the value of agile supply chain applications. Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems are used as examples, and two case studies for their implementation in the electronics and consumer goods industry are reported to support the propositions. The theories of diffusion of innovation, complementarities, network externalities, and technology structuration are applied to develop the propositions for fit, assimilation, and network effects. Information sharing and industry clockspeed are identified as the moderating factors in the proposed model. The framework has both managerial and research relevance. The research guides managers regarding ways to more fully realize the value of agile applications and forms a basis for future research on the business value of IT applications.

我国IT服务行业的发展前景与人才储备需求分析

随着经济全球化发展趋势加快和市场竞争的加剧,如何专注自己的核心业务已经成为企业最重要的生存法则之一.2000年至今,全球IT服务外包业务高速增长带动了全球IT服务外包产业的快速发展,IT服务企业雨后春笋一般纷纷成长起来,但IT服务企业数量和规模还远远不够,IT服务人才短缺和结构的不合理严重制约了我国IT服务外包产业的快速发展.随着中国IT技术市场与国际标准的全面接轨,IT服务人才的培养和储备已经成为我国与各国IT服务行业之间竞争的主要砝码.本文分析了我国IT服务行业的发展前景,以及对IT服务人才的潜在需求,以帮助IT服务企业做好人力资源规划,同时也为高等学校培养IT服务人才提供参考依据.     

IT assets, organization capital and market power: Contributions to business value

How much IT capital contributes to the economic value of firms is a relevant but complex issue, since the contribution may come from different sources that are difficult to separate. In this paper, we model the determinants of the economic value of multi-asset firms with market power when the adjustment costs of investing in IT capital turn into organization capital, increasing the future cash flow of the firm. The resulting valuation equation, new in the literature, has four simultaneous sources of economic value: (i) purchase costs of the assets, (ii) adjustment costs, (iii) organization capital, and (iv) rents from market power. The model is tested with a unique data base from Spanish banks in a time period when these banks invested heavily in IT capital. We find that 54% of the economic value of the representative bank corresponds to the purchase cost of material and immaterial assets, including IT capital. The remaining 46% corresponds to the contributions of: adjustment costs (17%), organization capital (7%) and rents from market power (22%).     

Information technology capability and firm performance: Role of industry

Despite several calls for considering industry in the IS value research, few studies investigated the relationship between benefits of IT and industries. This study extends Chae et al. (2014) by investigating how industry influences the relationship between IT capability and business performance. Unexpectedly, it finds that the control group in the industries in which the "transform" IT strategic role dominates showed superior performance than the IT leader. Also, the IT leaders in the "automate" IT strategic industry did not exhibit better business performance than the control firms. We discuss the implications of these findings.     

Closing the loop: Empirical evidence for a positive feedback model of IT business value creation

Researchers have established that information technology (IT) can improve firms’ productivity. Whether improved productivity leads to additional investment in IT, however, remains largely uninvestigated. In this paper, we consider whether the relationship between productivity and subsequent IT investment might be positive, negative, or ad hoc, and hypothesize that this relationship is positive. We analyze seven years of panel data from 1236 healthcare firms and present empirical evidence supporting our hypothesis. When our finding is combined with extant research, it becomes reasonable to propose that unidirectional causality does not fully describe the process of IT business value creation. Instead, we argue that existing static models of IT business value with unidirectional causality can be recast as dynamic models that explicitly incorporate multiple time periods and a positive feedback relationship to more accurately capture the complexity of this process. The creation of IT business value can thus be understood as a positive feedback model where IT investment in a given time period builds the stock of IT inputs, where those IT inputs then impact productivity, and where productivity leads to IT investment in a future time period, beginning the cycle anew.     

The contingent effect of personal IT innovativeness and IT self-efficacy on innovative use of complex IT

While organisational investment in complex information technologies (IT) keeps growing, these technologies are often applied at a superficial level and fail to attain the promised benefits. To further extract the value potential of complex IT, this study investigates employee users' innovate with IT (IwIT), which is a post-acceptance behaviour that refers to individual users applying IT in novel ways to support their task performance. Drawing on the information system continuance (ISC) model, we propose a research framework with perceived usefulness (PU) and satisfaction (SAT) as the antecedents of IwIT. We further emphasise the contingent role of personal characteristics and include personal innovativeness with IT (PIIT) and IT self-efficacy (ITSE) as the moderators of the framework. We validate the model with data from users of two complex ITs: enterprise resource planning and business intelligence technologies. The results suggest that positioning personal factors as moderators significantly increases the explanatory power of the ISC model and offers a more comprehensive understanding about IwIT. Specifically, ITSE positively moderates the effect of PU and negatively moderates the effect of SAT on IwIT. The moderating role of PIIT, however, is subject to the specific type of IT of investigation.     

Digital systems and competitive responsiveness: The dynamics of IT business value

The mechanics of competition involve perception and reaction to competitor moves. Both incur delays that can be reduced by digital systems. Using system dynamics and the Red Queen paradigm, we modeled the impact of IT investments on response delays and business value, with the following results: (a) value has significant transient components; (b) value depends on investment level and the relative delays of competitors; and (c) relative delays affect the first-mover advantage. These results show that when assessing the value of IT investments, it is important to consider (a) the temporal pattern of benefits, not just their total magnitude, and (b) the impact of ongoing moves by competitors.     

The Effect of Organizational Factors on the Business Value of IT: Universalistic,Contingency, and Configurational Predictions

The authors seek to expand the scope of theoretical approaches and organizational factors that are used in concert to examine the effect of organizational factors on IT business value in the present study. They explore the relationships among IT infrastructure capability, a set of five organizational factors, and IT business value using three dominant approaches in organizational research: the universalistic, contingency, and configurational approaches. The ensuing predictions are empirically tested through interviews with senior executives in 57 organizations.     

IT capabilities and firm performance: A contingency analysis of the role of industry and IT capability type

Previous empirical studies examining the relationship between IT capability and accounting-based measures of firm performance reported mixed results. We argued that prior work has relied on aggregate overall measures of the firm's IT capability, ignoring the specific type and nature of IT capability; and also has not fully considered important environmental conditions that influence the relationship. Drawing on a resource-based view, we advanced a contingency perspective and proposed that IT capabilities’ impact on firm resources was contingent on the “fit” between the type of IT capability/resource a firm possesses and the demands of the industry in which it competes. Specifically, using publicly available rankings as proxies for two types of IT capabilities (internally and externally focused), we empirically examined the degree to which three industry characteristics (dynamism, munificence, and complexity) influenced the impact of each type of IT capability on measures of financial performance. After controlling for prior performance, we found there was general support for the posited contingency model. The implications of these findings are also discussed.     

IT运维管理解决方案

随着银行业务管理和客户服务的需求的不断增加,IT系统运维管理至关重要。本文从业务感知角度出发,以业务拓扑模型为核心,依据业务建模、数据聚集、告警管控和界面展示四个层次来实现IT运营监控系统的管理。     

金融危机下IT培训回顾与前瞻

金融危机的冲击,反而给IT培训带来了发展的契机。然而IT培训行业发展至今,出现了种种的问题和弊端。本文一方面对当前IT培训行业的一些问题作了一些回顾。另一方面,又从发展的眼光来看待,在当前的大环境大背景下,就如何解决IT培训发展过程中出现的问题,做出了一些探讨。     

金融危机下IT培训回顾与前瞻

金融危机的冲击,反而给IT培训带来了发展的契机。然而IT培训行业发展至今,出现了种种的问题和弊端。本文一方面对当前IT培训行业的一些问题作了一些回顾。另一方面,又从发展的眼光来看待,在当前的大环境大背景下,就如何解决IT培训发展过程中出现的问题,做出了一些探讨。     

Quantifying forecast quality of IT business value

This article discusses how to quantify the forecasting quality of IT business value. We address a common economic indicator often used to determine the business value of project proposals, the Net Present Value (NPV). To quantify the forecasting quality of IT business value, we develop a generalized method that is able to account for asymptotic cases and negative valued entities. We assess the generalization with real-world data of four organizations together consisting of 1435 IT assets with a total investment cost of 1232+ million Euro for which 6328 forecasts were made. Using the generalized method, we determine the forecasting quality of the NPV, along with the benefits and cost using real-world data of another 102 IT assets with a total business value of 1812 million Euro. For the real-world case study, we will find that the quality of the forecasted NPVs is lower than the forecasted benefits, which is again lower than the forecasting quality of the cost. Also, we perform a sensitivity analysis to investigate the impact on the quality of an asset’s forecasted NPV when the forecasting quality of benefits or cost improves. Counterintuitively, it turned out in this case study that if the quality of cost forecasts would improve, the overall quality of its NPV predictions would degrade. This underlines the importance of both accurate cost and benefit predictions. Finally, we show how to use the quantified forecast information to enhance decision information using two simulation examples.     

基于战略匹配和IT能力的企业IT项目决策

为将战略匹配思想和IT能力对1T项目的影响转化为量化模型,支持企业更科学地进行IT决策,引入网络层次分析法模拟企业战略与IT战略之间双向对应和协同关系,分别借助Porter的战略理论和Henderson的战略匹配模型来代表企业战略和IT战略。考虑各种IT能力对IT战略和IT项目的影响,提出基于战略匹配和IT能力的IT项目决策模型,并以实例说明该模型的使用方法和有效性。     

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.     

Valuing information technology infrastructures: a growth options approach

Decisions to invest in information technology (IT) infrastructure are often made based on an assessment of its immediate value to the organization. However, an important source of value comes from the fact that such technologies have the potential to be leveraged in the development of future applications. From a real options perspective, IT infrastructure investments create growth options that can be exercised if and when an organization decides to develop systems to provide new or enhanced IT capabilities. We present an analytical model based on real options that shows the process by which this potential is converted into business value, and discuss middleware as an example technology in this context. We derive managerial implications for the evaluation of IT infrastructure investments, and the main findings are: (1) the flexibility provided by IT infrastructure investment is more valuable when uncertainty is higher; (2) the cost advantage that IT infrastructure investment brings about is amplified by demand volatility for IT-supported products and services; (3) in duopoly competition, the value of IT infrastructure flexibility increases with the level of product or service substitutability; and (4) when demand volatility is high, inter-firm competition has a lower impact on the value of IT infrastructure.     

IT valuation in turbulent times

This paper investigates performance impacts of two types of IT value practices – efficiency and knowledge management (KM) – by taking two external environmental factors – dynamism and hostility – into account. A survey of IT managers was conducted to assess the environmental conditions under which one mode of value practice or the other becomes more salient. Results suggest that despite the apparent value of knowledge management in the new economy, IT managers continue to emphasize the traditional orientation of efficiency. This tendency persists in highly dynamic and hostile industrial environments. Interestingly, however, when these environmental factors are controlled for, KM-based IT valuation clearly pays off for firm performance.     

高职高校文秘《办公自动化》课程教改研究

IT咨询行业自上个世纪80年代产生至今,其业务内容及服务方式都在不断更新变化,管理提升、业务流程优化、企业信息化规划、企业信息化实施与持续改善等越来越多的内容被引入到IT咨询行业中来。全球咨询业每年按照20%左右的速度增长,信息技术和信息系统的实施是迄今为止咨询业中最具活力的部分,其次是培训,战略规划,变革管理以及人力资源管理等领域。目前IT咨询业市场份额主要被控制在几家大的跨国公司手里,国有企业在技术和人员配备上都不占上风,但在服务的持续性保障、风险控制上却有独特的优势。