The Impact of Information Systems Investment and Management on Business Performance in Greece

The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) investment on business performance has been a major research subject for long time. Until the mid 1990s there was little empirical evidence of a positive and statistically significant relation between ICT investment and business performance (ICT Productivity Paradox). Subsequent research, conducted mainly in a few highly developed countries, provided some empirical evidence of a statistically significant positive contribution of ICT investment to some measures of business performance, which increases if ICT investment is complemented by ’co-investments’ that create some complementary ‘intangible assets’, such as new work practices, business processes, organizational structures and skills. In this paper is presented the first study of the impact of information systems (IS) investments on business performance in Greece, based on firm-level data collected through a questionnaire-based survey in cooperation with the Federation of Greek Industries. In this study we also examine whether there is complementarity between IS investment and a set of IS management factors. It is concluded that in Greece IS spending by firms as a percentage of their sales revenue is lower than in the highly developed countries. Also, using econometric models based on the Cobb Douglas production function, we conclude that IS investments in Greece make a positive and statistically significant contribution to firm output and labour productivity, but not to the return on assets. Moreover it was found that the average marginal productivities of ICT capital and ICT labour expenses in Greece are higher than in the highly developed countries; also they are much higher than the average marginal productivities of the non-ICT capital and the non-ICT labour expenses respectively. Finally it was found that there is complementarity between IS investment and the examined set of IS management factors with respect to firm output and labour productivity; therefore the combination of IS investment with these IS management factors results in additional increase of firm output and labour productivity beyond the individual effect of IS investment

TRANSFORMING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES’ APPROACH TO EPARTICIPATION THROUGH EFFICIENT EXPLOITATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Government agencies are making considerable investments for exploiting the capabilities offered by ICT, and especially the Internet, to increase citizens’ engagement in their decision and policy making processes. However, this first generation of e-participation has been characterised by limited usage of the ‘official’ e-consultation spaces of government agencies by the citizens. The emergence of Web 2.0 social media offers big opportunities for overcoming this problem, and proceeding to a second generation of broader, deeper and more advanced e-participation. This paper presents a methodology for the efficient exploitation of Web 2.0 social media by government agencies in order to broaden and enhance e-participation. It is based on a central platform which enables posting content and deploying micro web applications (‘Policy Gadgets’-Padgets) to multiple popular Web 2.0 social media, and also collecting users’ interactions with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings) in an efficient manner using their application programming interfaces (API). These interactions’ data undergo various levels of processing, such as calculation of useful analytics, opinion mining and simulation modelling, in order to provide effective support to public decision and policy makers. The proposed methodology allows government agencies to adopt advanced and highly effective ‘hybrid’ e-participation approaches

Employee education, information and communication technologies, workplace organization, and trade: a comparative analysis of Greek and Swiss firms

We investigated the effect of modern information and communication technologies (ICT), new forms of workplace organization, and trade (export) activities on the demand for employees with different levels of (vocational) education for Greek and Swiss enterprises. We found positive (negative) effects of the use of ICT for high-educated (low-educated) personnel in both countries and mixed effects for medium-educated employees. New forms of workplace organization do not have uniform effects on the workforce composition. A positive effect of exports for high-educated employees was traced only for Swiss firm

BUSINESS VALUE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEROPERABILITY ? A BALANCED SCORECARD APPROACH

It is widely accepted that the establishment of interoperability of firm?s IS with the ones of other cooperating firms (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been only to a very limited extent empirically investigated. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of IS interoperability on the four business performance dimensions/perspectives proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, internal business processes, customers, learning and innovation). In particular, we examine the effects of adopting three different fundamental types of IS interoperability standards differing in the level of detail and applicability: XML, industry-specific standards and proprietary standards. Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all these three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm?s IS on the above four business performance perspectives/dimensions; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industry-specific interoperability standards has the highest impact on business performance, while XML and proprietary standards have similar lower impacts. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted

Contractual and Relational Governance, ICT Skills and Organization Adaptations, and Cloud Computing Benefits

Cloud Computing (CC) has high potential to offer to firms important benefits, concerning both costs reduction, and in general efficiency improvements, as well as innovation facilitation and support. However, these benefits are not straightforward and auto-matically generated; their realization as well as their magnitude will depend on a variety of factors. Nevertheless, limited empirical research has been conducted in order to identify CC benefits’ determinants. This paper contributes to filling this research gap. It empirically investigates the effects of a) the contractual and relational governance of firm’s relationships with its CC services providers, and b) the adaptations of the skills of firm’s ICT personnel, as well as its internal ICT organization, to this new CC paradigm, on the magnitude of CC bene-fits. Our study uses data collected through a questionnaire from 115 Greek firms using CC services. It has been concluded that all the above four examined factors impact positively the benefits firms obtain from CC; the effect of the adaptation of the skills of firm’s ICT personnel is the strongest, followed by the effect of the relational governance

Hard And Soft ICT Capital And Cloud Computing Benefits

The Cloud Computing (CC) is a new innovative model of sourcing the information and communication technologies (ICT) services required by firms for supporting their activities, so it is necessary to investigate the level of benefits that CC offers to firms, as well as their determinants. However, limited empirical research has been conducted in this direction. Our paper contributes to filling this research gap. It formulates a set of research hypotheses concerning the effects of firm’s ‘hard ICT capital’, and also some types of firm’s ‘soft ICT capital’, on the benefits offered by CC, having as theoretical foundation the ‘resource-based view’ theory. These research hypotheses are tested using data collected through a survey from 115 Greek firms, from which CC benefits regression models are estimated. It has been concluded that the sophistication of firm’s ICT infrastructure (an overall measure of firm’s hard ICT capital) has a positive impact on CC benefits. Furthermore, three of the examined types of soft ICT capital have been found to impact positively CC benefits: the information systems (IS) inter- connection/integration capability, the ICT strategic planning and alignment capability, and the internal relationship between firm’s ICT unit and business units. Our findings reveal some aspects of firm’s ICT capital that affect the generation of value from this new innovative CC paradigm, which can be useful to CC service providers, and also management and ICT firms’ practitioners and consultant

Did the Reduction of ICT Investment due to the 2008 Economic Crisis Affect the Innovation Performance of Firms? - An Exploratory Analysis Based on Firm Data for the European Glass, Ceramics and Cement Industry

In this paper we investigate, first, the characteristics of the firms that reduced their ICT investment due to the 2008 crisis, focusing on the firms’ ICT characteristics in terms of the ICT, budget, skills and applications used. The analysis of the ICT characteristics that may influence the likelihood of having reduced ICT investment as a consequence of the crisis is primarily explorative, thus driven by available data and economic intuition. The second research question we examine empirically refers to the possibility that an economic crisis could affect innovation performance through the ICT investment channel. In connection with this, it is also interesting to analyze the ICT characteristics that are associated with ICT-enabled innovation performance; this is the third research question of this paper. Our study is based on firm data from the glass/ceramics/cement industry in six European countries, which have been collected through the ‘e-Business Survey’ of the European Union. We find that ICT-related crisis vulnerability correlates positively with decreasing ICT budgets (pro-cyclical investment behaviour), the existence of skill deficits in ICT, the awareness of and interest in new ICT applications that presumably request much additional ICT investment, the exposure to strong price competition and the strong presence in international markets, in which activities have significantly decreased due to the crisis. Further, statistically significant negative relationship between ICT-enabled product innovation and crisis vulnerability (pro-cyclical behaviour) is found only for new products or services that contain ICT components, and are therefore directly affected by crisis-related decreasing product demand

EVALUATING COMPLEX GOVERNMENT SAAS THROUGH VALUE FLOW MODEL ESTIMATION

Government agencies are increasingly making use of cloud computing (CC) services, initially simpler infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS and PaaS) ones, and later more sophisticated software as a service (SaaS) ones. However, with respect to the latter the electronic support of the high complexity government processes is a difficult task and requires highly sophisticated and complex government-specific SaaS offering extensive functionalities for fulfilling the extensive requirements posed by relevant legislation. It is therefore imperative to conduct comprehensive evaluations of such complex government-specific SaaS, in order to assess to what extent they support the targeted government processes and fulfil their extensive and complex requirements, and also identify and prioritize necessary improvements. This paper presents an advanced methodology for evaluating complex government-specific SaaS, which enables comprehensive multi-dimensional evaluation of a wide range of aspects of them that are highly important in the government context, and detailed evaluation of the provided complex and extensive functionality with respect to the requirements defined by relevant legislation; furthermore, it enables a rational identification and prioritization of necessary improvements. It is based on the estimation of multi-layer ‘value flow models’ of these SaaS from evaluation data collected from users. The proposed methodology has been applied for the evaluation of a complex SaaS aiming to support the wide range of activities of the Greek ‘Local School Committees’, which are responsible for managing all government funding provided for the operation of all the schools in a specific geographical area, as well as all other income of them, and for covering all kinds of their operating expenses as well as purchases. The research presented in this paper can contribute to a more rational, efficient and effective exploitation of an emerging ‘disruptive technology’, the CC, and especially its most sophisticated form, the SaaS, in the public sector

Outsourcing and firm performance—a comparative study of Swiss and Greek firms

This article aims at analyzing (i) the factors determining the firms' propensity to outsource various processes (production of intermediate products, production of final products, R&D activities, ICT activities), and (ii) the impact of outsourcing on firms' innovation performance, as well as labor productivity. The integral investigation of the determining factors, as well as the impact of outsourcing on innovation and productivity based on the same data in a comparative setting (Switzerland versus Greece) are important new elements and contributions of this study to the existing empirical literature. It has been concluded that in both countries more innovative firms (R&D) were stronger inclined to outsourcing activities than less innovative ones, whereas on the contrary, the educational level of employees and the labor cost showed no effect on outsourcing in both countries. Also, the intensity of ICT use and organizational aspects, especially those related to the formal structure of workplace organization, were relevant for the Swiss firms but not for the Greek firms. With respect to the impact of outsourcing on performance, it has been concluded that it tends to enhance innovation, particularly process innovation, but only weakly productivity (at least directly