The Impact of Information Technology on the Performance of Diversified Firms

Diversification may increase economic benefits through more efficient utilization of business resources across multiple markets. However, the benefits of these scope economies are often not realized due to costs of coordinating resources in multiple markets. Information technology (IT) is widely used to achieve more efficient coordination by reducing the costs of coordinating business resources across multiple markets. Because of the need for coordination of business resources across multiple markets, diversification can increase the demand for IT. But does increased use of IT improve the performance of firms that are highly diversified? This research tackles this question by undertaking an empirical study of the impact of IT on the performance resulting from diversification, particularly related diversification. The empirical aspect of this subject has received little attention from previous information systems (IS) and economics research. This research also sheds light on the business value of IT by showing the importance of the complementarity of IT and diversification in firm performance, which has also received limited attention in prior IS research

An Empirical Evidence for the RelationshipBetween Information Technology and Coordination Costs

Information technology (IT) has profoundly changed the way that business is conducted. With the use of IT, organizations radically redesign their business processes. IT is also radically restructuring the market by altering customer-supplier relationships. These changes are encouraged by the ability of IT that facilitates better information processing, sharing, and faster responsiveness, thereby improving coordination of the economic activities of separate units of an organization and across organizations. Most information systems (IS) research (Malone, Yates, and Benjamin 1987, 1989; Gurbaxani and Whang 1991; Clemons and Reddi 1992; Bakos and Brynjolfsson 1993; Brynjolfsson, Malone, Gurbaxani, and Kambil 1994) has examined the impact of IT on the organization of economic activities based on the theoretical speculation that IT reduces coordination costs both within an organization and between organizations, and improves coordination of the economic activities critical to the best use of resources and the delivery of goods and services. This theoretical speculation, however, has not been empirically analyzed in the IS field. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between IT and coordination costs, and presents some implications for how IT contributes to firm output

The Impact of the Web and Social Media on the Performance of Nonprofit Organizations

This research empirically analyzes the impact of both the Web and social media on the performance of nonprofit organizations by using 100 nonprofit organizations ranked by web traction measures, including Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers. Our findings from ANOVA and non-parametric tests demonstrate that nonprofit organizations with higher web traction have greater contributions and grants than others with lower web traction. These findings suggest that the use of the Web coupled with social media promotes better, interactive (two-way) communications with the public, as well as fundraising and that nonprofit organizations that attract more supporters on the Web and social media can increase charitable giving. Our regression analyses based on the economic model of giving that estimates the direct relationship between web traction and donations show similar results. However, the results also show that the impact of economic factors such as price and fundraising activities on charitable giving is much greater than the impact of web traction

An Integrative Framework for Contextual Factors Affecting Information Technology Implementation

While previous research has provided a great deal of information on individual factors that play a role in IT implementation success, a gap in the research exists when it comes to formulating a holistic view of overall environmental factors. This paper conducts a literature review and expands Weill’s conversion effectiveness model to develop a framework integrating the various enterprise-level contextual factors affecting IT implementation. It also discusses relationships among contextual factors and cross-border issues in the global outsourcing environment. This holistic interpretation of individual factors is an initial step toward understanding the complexities of corporate environments and their effects on IT implementation success. The framework can provide companies with a useful tool to evaluate their current environment, determine its strengths and weaknesses, and assess how these will affect IT implementation