IT infrastructure flexibility is now being viewed as an organizational core competency that is necessary for organizations to survive and prosper in rapidly-changing, competitive, business environments. Using data from 200 U.S. and Canadian companies, this study examines the impact of the four components of IT infrastructure flexibility (compatibility, connectivity, modularity, and IT personnel) on strategic IT-business alignment and the extent to which various applications are implemented within an organization. The "extent" of implementation refers to the the organization's experience with the particular application and the degree to which the application is implemented and used throughout the organization. The findings from analysis of a structural model provide evidence that connectivity, modularity, and IT personnel (among other considerations that we discuss in the paper) make significant, positive impacts on strategic alignment and that all four components result in significant, positive impacts on the applications implementation. The study reinforces the importance of IT infrastructure flexibility to organizations as one source for sustainable competitive advantage.
In a competitive environment, firms continually need to establish new business objectives to fulfill their corporate visions. A whole organization should be structured to achieve these objectives. In order to support the objectives, information technology (IT) needs to be aligned to the organization’s mission. IT professionals have provided systems for the organization and, in most cases, these systems consist of individual function, which should be used in an integrated manner. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has emerged to offer an integrated IT solution. It is suggested that ERP could facilitate achieving compatibility between task characteristics and technology characteristics, a long overdue IT solution. ERP has become one of the major IT investments for many organizations. Unfortunately, little research has been done to provide managers guidance on ERP potential for their organizations. Some useful information about ERP can be found by examining the technological evolution of ERP from MRP.
Information technology (IT) infrastructure deserves serious attention from both the practitioner and academic communities, especially concerning the factors for IT infrastructure flexibility. The issue of flexibility is viewed as a critical aspect of IT infrastructure, because organizations are faced with an ever-increasing rate of change in their business environments. One effort most business sectors have made to prepare for this change is the trend toward mass customization. Recently, many organizations have embraced mass customization in an attempt to provide unique value to their customers in a costefficient manner.The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate a sequential relationship between IT infrastructure flexibility, mass customization, and business performance. The process involves an investigation of the critical factors for IT infrastructure flexibility, along with the firm's mass customization and business performance indicators. The findings of this study provide evidence that integration and modularity of an organization's IT infrastructure facilitate the organization's effort to accommodate mass customization. Additionally, the flexibility of the IT personnel, the human component of IT infrastructure, and mass customization directly affect the organization's business performance.
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