Review: IT-Dependent Strategic Initiatives and Sustained Competitive Advantage: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature

Abstract

The role of information systems in the creation and appropriation of economic value has a long tradition of research, within which falls the literature on the sustainability of IT-dependent competitive advantage. In this article, we formally define the notion of IT-dependent strategic initiative and use 1 Jane Webster was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Anitesh Barua was the associate editor. Jeanne Ross, Anandhi Bharadwaj, and Paul Pavlou served as reviewers.

The role of IS capabilities in delivering sustainable improvements to competitive positioning

“…Against this back-drop, we chose to follow Barua et al's [1995] and Piccoli & Ives' [2005] advice by using individual strategic initiatives as the unit of analysis to study the competitive impacts of IT. In so doing, this study presents new evidence that it is the effective application of IS capabilities -to the design, implementation and operation of individual IS enhancements -that has the potential to deliver significant improvements to the organization's competitive positioning, as measured at the process level [see figure 1:…”

The Contingency Effect of Relational Competency on the Relationship between Information Technology Competency and Firm Performance

“…In this view, IOC can leverage the firm's external resources and push the firm to integrate and reconfigure its IT competency in a unique way, and thus generate a competitive advantage (Piccoli et al 2005;Wu et al 2006). …”

The Mobile Agility Framework: An Exploratory Study of Mobile Technology Enhancing Organizational Agility

“…As organizational knowledge can be either individual (i.e., created by and inherent in the individual) or social (created by and inherent in [the] collective actions of a group) [p. 113], being able to identify and locate carriers of individual knowledge with the help of mobile technology may enhance the efficiency with which social knowledge is created, transferred, and applied. Also, in the realm of relationships, researchers suggest that beneficial relationships between the IS function and business are promoted by coordinating and communicating extensively together [34], p. 756. Thus, being able to identify as well as locate individuals-both within and outside of organizational boundariesmay enhance coordination and communication inside the organization as well as the coordination and communication with customers and partners.…”