Impact of Information Technology Capital on Firm Scope and Performance: The Role of Asset Characteristics

The Use of Business Processes as a Source of Competitive Advantage: Evidence from a High Velocity Market

“…According to Ray et al [17], ERP systems do not only help firms to integrate their production related functions but they also "enable firms to replicate and propagate administrative innovations (e.g., organisational resources) and deploy their brand and customer base -relational capital -across a wide variety of markets" [17] by providing enterprise-wide platforms (e.g., B2B). Hence, ERP systems reconfigure the resource base of firms by deploying and extending valuable organisational and relational resources broadly through a number of tools and infrastructures.…”

“…Business processes such as intranet and ERP software that support inter-functional coordination of activities, processes for acquiring supplies and other raw materials along with optimising logistics and warehousing activities [supply chain systems], and other IT systems that help information processing about customers and markets [CRM] provide firms agility and enable them to respond market demands quickly [17]. Furthermore, effective IT and SCM systems help firms to address market needs (i.e., changing product ranges and/or accelerating product logistics) rapidly.…”

“…In the past, several researchers [19] conducted research activities in order to offer practical contributions to executives and managers about their resource investment decisions by revealing the key determinants of firm success and their relative importance on performance. Some [18,16,17] suggest that the resources that are developed internally may provide greater contribution to firm success since they address the isolating mechanisms; historical uniqueness, causal ambiguity, social complexity, time compression diseconomies and interconnectedness which make resources inimitable [20].…”

“…Wernerfelt [1] theorised that resources were leveraged inside the firm and that each firm had a unique resource endowment [3]. These identified firm-specific intangible resources can be described as employee know-how [4,5], firm-specific tacit knowledge [6,7], human capital [8,9], innovation [10], customer relationships [11,9], firm reputation and organisational culture [12,13], social capital [14], entrepreneurial skills [15], business processes [16,17] and information technology [18,17]. In the past, several researchers [19] conducted research activities in order to offer practical contributions to executives and managers about their resource investment decisions by revealing the key determinants of firm success and their relative importance on performance.…”

Information Technology Implementation and Operational Efficiency

“…While they have examined the changes in financial measures pre and post implementation of such IT-based systems, we observe whether there is a significant difference between the inventory turnover of the recognized IT-implementing firms and that of other firms. There have been some recent papers about the impact of IT on firms' performance, for specific industries in certain countries (Bazaee, 2010;Choe, 2006;GuLES et al, 2012;Liang et al, 2010;Ray et al, 2013;Zhaneta and Liljana, 2012). Whereas those papers have focused on whether IT investment affects the performance, our focus is to observe whether there is a significant difference between the companies that are recognized with IT excellence and those that are not, in terms of operational efficiency.…”