A Resource‐Based View of Strategic IT Alignment: How Knowledge Sharing Creates Competitive Advantage

A critical decision problem for top management, and the focus of this study, is whether the CEO (chief executive officer) and CIO (chief information officer) should commit their time to formal planning with the expectation of producing an information technology (IT)‐based competitive advantage. Using the perspective of the resource‐based view, a model is presented that examines how strategic IT alignment can produce enhanced organizational strategies that yield competitive advantage. One hundred sixty‐one CIOs provided data using a postal survey. Results supported seven of the eight hypotheses. They showed that information intensity is an important antecedent to strategic IT alignment, that strategic IT alignment is best explained by multiple constructs which operationalize both process and content measures, and that alignment between the IT plan and the business plan is significantly related to the use of IT for competitive advantage. Study results raise questions about the effect of CEO participation, which appears to be the weak link in the process, and also about the perception of the CIO on the importance of CEO involvement. The paper contributes to our understanding of how knowledge sharing in the alignment process contributes to the creation of superior organizational strategies, provides a framework of the alignment‐performance relationship, and furnishes several new constructs.     

战略维度间的匹配关系与企业战略定位选择——基于战略群组理论视角

基于战略群组理论视角,分析了企业战略定位中不同战略维度的匹配问题。以境内外交易所上市的中国互联网企业为样本,选取移动互联业务比重和IT投入强度这两个关键战略维度,采用面板数据回归模型检验了研究假设。研究发现,当企业的移动互联业务比重和IT投入强度同时处于较高水平时,这一战略组合能为企业带来高绩效,是一种合理的战略位置;另一合理的战略位置则是较低的移动互联业务比重配以较低的IT投入强度,它也明显好于一者较高、另一者较低的战略组合。以上结果表明,战略定位的关键是实现不同战略维度决策之间的合理匹配,从战略组合的角度理解行业中的战略位置。研究结论不仅有助于理解移动互联市场的竞争战略与绩效,也验证了战略群组理论在战略定位研究中的重要意义,对战略组合的分析不可简化为对各战略维度的单独分析。     

Chief Executive Officer Behavior: The Catalyst for Strategic Alignment

Organizations facing the need for significant change must determine both adirection for change and a means to realize the strategy. Implementing astrategy for change is dependent upon aligning organizational parametersproperly at the system level: structure, culture, training and development,recruitment and hiring, resource allocation, leadership, information systems,reward systems, coordination mechanisms, and control systems. The chiefexecutive officer must be the catalyst for strategic alignment. Four clustersof behavior are particularly important for the chief executive officer toexhibit in implementing strategic change: Communication, StrategicInteraction, Resource Utilization, and Leadership. Specific behaviors withinthese clusters are identified. The chief executive officer has an importantrole to play as the catalyst for strategic alignment, but the ultimate purposeof that role is to make it possible for the organization to see itself as abroader community responsible for the long-term success of the organization.     

Examining the Antecedents and Consequences of CIO Strategic Decision‐Making Authority: An Empirical Study*

Despite the strategic importance of information technology (IT) to contemporary firms, chief information officers (CIO) often still have varying degrees of strategic decision‐making authority. In this study, we apply the theory of managerial discretion to define CIO strategic decision‐making authority and argue that the CIO's level of strategic decision‐making authority directly influences IT's contribution to organization performance. We also draw on the power and politics perspective in the strategic decision‐making literature to identify the direct antecedents to the CIO's strategic decision‐making authority. A theoretical model is presented and empirically tested using survey data collected from a cross‐industry sample of 174 matched pairs of CIOs and top business executives through structural equation modeling. The results suggest that organizational climate, organizational support for IT, the CIO's structural power, the CIO's level of strategic effectiveness, and a strong partnership between the CIO and top management team directly influence the CIO's level of strategic decision‐making authority within the organization. The results also suggest that the CIO's strategic decision‐making authority in the organization directly influences the contribution of IT to firm performance and that effective CIOs have a greater influence on IT's contribution when provided with strategic decision‐making authority.     

信息技术、核心能力和企业绩效的实证研究

信息技术增强企业竞争力的机理是有效提升企业信息技术应用水平的重要前提。基于核心能力理论构建信息技术资源和信息技术应用能力通过企业核心能力这一中介变量影响企业绩效的理论模型,并考虑环境动态性在信息技术增强企业竞争力过程中的调节效应,应用偏最小二乘法的结构方程模型,对中国296家企业的问卷调查数据进行分析。研究结果表明,在不考虑环境动态性的情况下,无论是信息技术资源还是信息技术应用能力都无法直接影响企业绩效,信息技术必须通过支持企业核心能力间接影响企业绩效;环境动态性在信息技术增强企业竞争力过程中有显著的调节作用,不同环境下信息技术影响企业绩效的机理是不同的,在稳定环境下企业信息技术应用的重点是获取支持核心能力的信息技术资源,在动态环境下企业更应该构建信息技术应用能力,才能实现对不断变化的核心能力的持续支持,进而提升企业绩效。     

Rationality in Strategic Information Technology Decisions: The Impact of Shared Domain Knowledge and IT Unit Structure*

Rationality is a fundamental concept to several models of IT planning and implementation. Though the importance of following rational processes in making strategic IT decisions is well acknowledged, there is not much understanding on why discrepancies occur in the IT decision‐making process and what factors affect rationality. Drawing upon structural and resource‐based perspectives of strategy, this study examines the influence of shared domain knowledge and IT unit structure on rationality in strategic IT decisions. Data were gathered from 223 senior IT executives using a survey to examine the relationships among the research constructs. The results suggest a positive impact of shared domain knowledge and formalization of IT unit structure on rationality in strategic IT decisions. Further, a highly centralized IT unit structure was found to negatively influence shared domain knowledge. On the other hand, formalization of IT structure positively influenced shared domain knowledge. The implications of the findings for research and practice are presented.     

信息技术资源和信息技术能力的互补性及其绩效影响

信息技术资源和信息技术能力之间的关系是明确信息技术价值实现机理的基础。本文基于资源基础理论、竞争战略理论和核心能力理论,构建了信息技术资源、信息技术能力、信息系统支持企业竞争战略、信息系统支持企业核心能力和企业绩效之间关系的理论模型,研究信息技术资源和信息技术能力在信息技术价值实现过程中的互补性以及其对企业绩效的影响机理。利用层次回归分析方法对296份中国企业的实际调查数据进行了数据分析和模型拟合。研究结果表明信息技术资源和信息技术能力在信息技术价值实现过程中具有互补性,而且两者之间的互补性通过信息系统支持企业竞争战略和信息系统支持企业核心能力等中介变量间接影响企业绩效。     

Environmental scanning—Does it help the chief executive?

Firms must correctly identify and analyze the nature of their strategic environments, their strategic oppurtunities and problems, and, formulate the precise strategy sets for corporate strategy for accomplishing the chosen organizational objectives and goals. This articles reports on a survey. Chief executives of industrial corporations provided their insights and experience (see Appendix I) and the findings are analyzed for the implications for other practising chief executives. The nature of environment which is strategic to a particular firm has considerable influence upon the firm's choice of strategies. The correct understanding of this influence is critical to the firm's organizational effectiveness. Only after a correct understanding can the chief executive formulate the precise mix of strategies and meld them in the strategy sets of the corporate strategy.The major findings indicate that the levels of difficulty experienced in accomplishing firm's objectives and goals depend upon the perceived nature of complexity, unpredictability and dynamism of the firm's strategic environments. The levels of clarity on strategic issues also depend upon these same attributes of environments. The formulation of strategy sets of corporate strategy are indicative of the ways by which the chief executive and his management team expect the firm to achieve its major objectives and goals by monitoring the strategy sets to keep in tune with the changing realities of the firm's strategic environments. General management, marketing and finance, were the vital group strategies, followed by production and research and development. External relations, personnel and procurement were the least important strategies. Firms operating in simple and stable environments experienced the least difficulty in achieving corporate goals, while firms in dynamic and complex environments experienced the greatest difficulty.     

Capability,Quality, and Performance of Offshore IS Vendors: A Theoretical Framework and Empirical Investigation

Information systems (IS) offshoring has become a widespread practice and a strategic sourcing choice for many firms. While much has been written by researchers about the factors that lead to successful offshoring arrangements from the client's viewpoint, the vendor's perspective has been largely scarce. The vendor perspective is equally important as offshore IS vendors need to make important decisions in terms of delivering operational and strategic performance and aligning their resources and processes in order to meet or exceed targeted outcomes. In this article, we propose and test a three‐level capability–quality–performance (CQP) theoretical framework to understand vendor outcomes and their antecedents. The first level of the framework represents three vendor capabilities: relationship management, contract management, and information technology management. The second level has three mediating variables representing process quality: partnership, service, and deliverable quality. The third level has three dependent variables representing vendor outcomes: operational performance, strategic performance, and satisfaction. The model was tested with 188 vendor firms from India and China, the two most popular destinations for IS offshoring. Results support the CQP framework; vendor capabilities are significant predictors of intermediate quality measures, which in turn affect vendor outcomes. Implications of the study findings to both theory development and IS offshore vendor strategic decision making are discussed.     

The chief executive and his information system

The authors examine the attitudes of British chief executives towards their information systems using recent survey evidence. They discuss the chief executive's individual computation needs and the extent to which he satisfies these personally, his attitudes towards computer-based information and corporate models, and his general informational and analytical requirements. Of particular interest, is the relative contribution as judged by chief executives of intuitive judgement, computer-based analysis and manual analysis respectively to strategic decision-taking; comparative valuations of formal and informal information systems are also ascertained. On the evidence provided by the chief executives, future prospects for computer systems and modelling techniques at strategic level are generally sound although it is difficult to see them achieving the dominance at top managerial level once envisaged by the more optimistic and imaginative management scientists and cyberneticians.     

IT Governance Characteristics,Electronic Medical Records Sophistication,and Financial Performance in U.S. Hospitals: An Empirical Investigation

As a result of a recent federal government mandate, an increasing number of hospitals have decided to adopt electronic medical record (EMR) systems. This initiative is expected to lead toward more efficient and higher quality health care; however, little is known about governance characteristics and organizational performance for EMR adopters. Our goal is to inform theory and practice by examining hospitals with a sophisticated EMR and comparing those hospitals to similar hospitals (with a less sophisticated EMR) to understand the association between information technology (IT) governance characteristics and the implications on financial performance. Leveraging elements of the upper echelon theory, we posit that hospitals in which the chief information officer (CIO) reports to the chief executive officer, CIO turnover is low, and an IT steering committee is present are more likely to have a sophisticated EMR. We argue that EMR sophistication leads to improved financial performance. Our results underscore the importance of continuity in the CIO position on successful EMR implementations. Results also show that hospital size and financial performance are strongly associated with EMR sophistication. In addition, we find that a sophisticated EMR appears to be a fundamental element in improving hospitals’ revenue cycle management. Moreover, we find that hospitals with a sophisticated EMR appear to be more profitable. Finally, we observe that total payroll expense adjusted by total discharges drops among the sophisticated hospitals, potentially due to an increase in employee productivity. These insights can serve as a basis for tempering expectations relative to the financial impact of EMR adoption.     

Competitive and Cooperative Positioning in Supply Chain Logistics Relationships*

Cooperative logistics relationships require the sharing of information, which must be enabled by the integration of disparate information systems across partners. In this article, we theorize business‐to‐business logistics relationships should be managed using cooperative and competitive postures. Based on data from 91 dyadic relationships using interorganizational information technology (IT), we find that performance gains accrue when parties share strategic information and customize IT; mutual trust enables IT customization and strategic‐information flows and equitable relationship‐specific investments positively impact IT customization, mutual trust, and performance. Among other scholarly and practical implications discussed, partners should compete on resources for IT customization and cooperate to share strategic information. Managers tend to think of relationships with firms as polar opposites and view them as entirely cooperative or entirely competitive. Our results support active balancing and understanding of both competitive and cooperative stances. Such an approach enables conditions for participation symmetry that yields greater performance gains.     

Performance effects of IT capability, service process innovation, and the mediating role of customer service

Few academic studies have investigated how information technology (IT) capability and service process innovation can create performance gains for firms through customer service. We propose that customer service is a significant mediator through which IT capability and service process innovation influence the performance of a firm, and that IT capability is also a critical factor that facilitates service process innovation. Empirical support for our argument was derived from data collected from 174 firms in the Taiwan IT industry. The results suggest that managerial initiatives should be directed at developing IT capability and service process innovation and leveraging them to facilitate customer service to attain superior firm performance. Furthermore, greater IT capability would lead to a higher degree of service process innovation.     

Can information technology enable profitable diversification? An empirical examination

Investments in information technology (IT) are now a major part of corporate investment, and the management of IT is essential to performance. In general, IT is expected to have performance effects when it is judiciously used to complement existing corporate capabilities. In this research, we examine how IT can complement diversification strategy. Using hypotheses and measures suggested by information processing theory and the theory of corporate strategy, testable hypotheses are derived to examine how IT can complement diversification. Results suggest that spending on computer technology significantly complements a strategy of unrelated diversification. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

All Things Great and Small: Organizational Size,Boundaries of the Firm,and a Changing Environment

Abstract

Research findings have established a relationship between organizational size and a substantial set of organizational outcomes, resulting in size's distinction as “perhaps the most powerful explanatory organizational covariate in strategic analysis”. We draw on the theory of the firm to provide a theory-driven definition of firm size and as a framework to organize the diverse research on firm size. We examine studies over the last 20 plus years since the last review of research on organizational size that have expanded our understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of larger firms, the environmental factors that have changed the merits of firms relative to markets, the managerial bias to pursue growth, and the most recent findings on the performance implications of organizational size. In doing so, the review provides extensions to our understanding of the theory of the firm, by integrating contingency theory, the resource-based theory of the firm, leadership theories, and the knowledge-based view of the firm. In addition, based on an extensive review of the measurement methodologies for the most common control variable employed by strategy scholars, this review outlines a rich and robust set of opportunities for future research to explore the nature of organizational size and its effects.     

From I-O Economics' S-C-P Paradigm Through Strategic Groups to Competence-Based Competition: Reflections on the Puzzle of Competitive Strategy

Over the past 20 years one basic question which has occupied the attention of both researchers and practitioners in the strategic management field is ‘with whom and how do firms compete?’ How research in strategy has attempted to answer this question over the past 20 years is the subject of this article. We begin by reviewing the literatures on industrial organization, spatial competition, strategic groups, cognitive communities and networks and examine how each of these theoretical perspectives have been used to answer basic questions of competition and rivalry. We then show how the resource-based view of the firm and the theory of competence-based competition can be used to integrate these perspectives. We conclude by proposing six issues which should motivate future strategy research, and which can help and enhance our understanding of how firms compete.     

考虑残值变化和顾客异质性的零售商定价与库存决策

本文研究策略型消费者对零售商的定价和库存决策的影响。与以往的研究假设残值固定不变,且消费者均为策略型消费者不同的是,本文考虑了顾客的异质性以及残值由清仓期库存决定这一特点。本文的研究表明:在消费者均为策略型消费者,且清楚零售商将采取残值定价策略的情况下,零售商可以通过数量保证策略来提高自身的期望利润,降低库存订货量。在考虑顾客异质性的条件下,当零售商采取估值定价策略时,零售商的最大期望利润与短视型消费者在市场上的比例成正相关。并且,存在一个唯一的阈值点,当短视型消费者在市场上的比例高于这一阈值点时,估值定价策略优于保留价格定价策略,反之,则保留价格定价策略更优。     

中国制造业IT投资的绩效与行业特征调节效应

以中国制造业上市公司为研究样本,对信息技术投资与企业绩效之间的关系进行比较分析,并阐释行业特征变量在其中所起的调节作用.实证分析结果表明,信息技术投资有利于提高企业绩效,行业集中度、行业资本密集度和行业增长率均对信息技术与企业绩效之间的关系有明显的调节作用.本研究结论在一定程度上拓展了信息技术投资与企业绩效之间关系的研究内容,对中国制造业的信息化建设有一定的战略启示.     

The development of global IT infrastructure

A research model of the impact of a multinational corporations’ (MNC) global strategic orientation on global IT infrastructure was developed using global integration, or the degree to which a global strategy is actually implemented, as a mediator. A “matched pair” survey of 94 MNCs was conducted (two respondents per firm) in order to guard against common source bias. The results showed that the firms that pursue a globally oriented strategy actually enacted these strategies as indicated by a wide-variety of resource flows across national units. The role of the level of global integration as a mediator between global strategic orientation and global IT capabilities was empirically demonstrated. This confirms that a global strategy is not sufficient to ensure that an enabling IT infrastructure will be developed; rather it is the actual level of integration and interdependence that is achieved as a result of the strategy that drives IT infrastructure. The primary areas in which global integration was found to be closely linked to the global IT infrastructure were human resources, which significantly influenced the reach, range, support services and planning of the global IT infrastructure, and information resources which significantly influenced the planning dimension of the infrastructure. These results strongly suggest that the transfer of people among national units creates an information needs “pull” which leads to the development of better IT infrastructure and that the “push” of standardized information also contributes positively.