Relationship between information infrastructure capability and organisational competitive advantage: An empirical study on MSC Malaysia companies

Abstract

The progressive movement of globalisation indicates that developing economies, especially Malaysia, need enhanced and new level of labour force that can work effectively across national and cultural boundaries to achieve competitive advantage. Among the requirements considered critical to achieving competitive advantage is investment in appropriate information and communications technology (ICT) applications, which could enable information infrastructure capability (IIC). However, managers always face with a lot of difficulties to obtain the appropriate IIC due to what is considered an elusive empirical link between IIC and competitive advantage. This research argues that IIC, if examined carefully and in a holistic fashion, would be able to create, store, share and use knowledge for competitive advantage. This research also addressed indirect relationships between IIC and competitive advantage. The conceptual model for this research comprises competitive advantage as the dependent variable and the dimensions of IIC namely, dynamic capability, integrating capability, data management capability, security capability, utility capability and collaborating capability, corroborated from past studies, as the independent variables. The capabilities, which were distinct but highly interrelated, constrain, facilitate, and reinforce each other. The conceptual framework of this research was underpinned by Organisational Information Processing Theory and empirically tested using a set of survey questionnaire, which was validated and reliability tested