The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of information technology infrastructure flexibility (ITIF) on competitive advantage (CA) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For this purpose, this paper conducted multivariate analysis of covariance by using ITIF as an independent variable and four dependent variables for CA: production cost, fast and reliable delivery, product quality, and flexibility of product design, which are also essential factors in IT buying decision making for organizations. The results of this study show that having a flexible IT infrastructure positively influences all four variables of CA. Moreover, the result of the univariate analysis indicates that the SMEs’ highest benefit of having ITIF is the improvement of product quality and an increased flexibility of product design. These results emphasize the importance of ITIF for SMEs and cloud computing, as a means for achieving this flexibility.
#2Arnoud De Meyer(Singapore Management University)H-Index: 23
Changes in the global environment are generating opportunities for companies to build advantage by creating loosely coupled networks or ecosystems. Ecosystems are larger, more diverse, and more fluid than a traditional set of bilateral partnerships or complementors. By leveraging ecosystems, companies can deliver complex solutions while maintaining corporate focus. This article describes six keys to unlock ecosystem advantage: pinpointing where value is created, defining an architecture of diffe...
#1Sigi Goode(ANU: Australian National University)H-Index: 14
#2Shirley Gregor(ANU: Australian National University)H-Index: 30
While organisational size is a popular construct in information systems (IS) research, findings from its use have been inconsistent. Few studies have explored this inconsistency or attempted to address this problem. This paper uses Churchill's measure development paradigm to conduct three separate but related investigations into the size construct. Study 1 explored the domain and dimensions of size. Some 2000 research papers published in six leading IS journals over an 11-year period were read i...
The Internet brings enormous advantages to organizations in the forms of standardization, power of networks, and inexpensive operations. Past decade has seen an increase in cooperative relationships among organizations. Despite the acknowledgment of the impact of the Internet on interorganizational relationships (IORs), there is a paucity of empirical research in this area, particularly for service firms, with regard to their entire life cycle. Using a field-based survey, in cooperation with the...
#1Rebecca Duray(UCCS: University of Colorado Colorado Springs)H-Index: 11
Researchers illustrate many theoretical concepts of mass customisation with case examples. Although case examples provide interesting stories, these concepts have not been thoroughly tested and have limited generalisability. Few studies provide broader rigorous tests of mass customisation concepts. This study addresses mass customisation from a broader perspective using 126 mass customising companies to test the tactical requirements of a mass customisation strategy. This paper focuses on the co...
Information technology (IT) infrastructure deserves serious attention from both the practitioner and academic communities, especially concerning the factors for IT infrastructure flexibility. The issue of flexibility is viewed as a critical aspect of IT infrastructure, because organizations are faced with an ever-increasing rate of change in their business environments. One effort most business sectors have made to prepare for this change is the trend toward mass customization. Recently, many or...
This paper presents an empirical study to examine the relationship between IS flexibility, organizational flexibility, and competitive advantage. The study presumes IS usage and organizational learning as the intermediate variables. The study used a questionnaire survey to obtain responses from IS users. The survey was carried out with 296 user-respondents from 42 organizations across eight industrial sectors. For the purpose of gaining more insight into a variable, its dimensions were considere...
Executives make few moves more critical than their decisions about which technology-infrastructure investments will promote future strategic agility. To pinpoint best practices, three IT experts marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One finding was that when companies describe their IT-infrastructure capabilities as services instead of equipment (say, the provision of a fully maintained laptop computer with access to all company systems and the Internet), they do a better job o...
The purpose of this study was to explore the dimensions of apparel manufacturing strategy (i.e. cost, quality, flexibility, delivery time) and their relationship to style and sewing systems. U.S. apparel producers are seeking strategies that will make their production competitive to production in low wage countries. Two style types were defined: new styles and standardized styles. Results indicated that the production of new styles of apparel is related to the manufacturing dimensions of quality...
Abstract In this paper, we offer a competency-based view of how information systems (IS) can be used to achieve competitive advantage. Building on the resource-based research that links distinctive organizational competencies to sustainable competitive advantage, we argue that the potential contributions of IS to competitive advantage can be understood in terms of their impact on the development and utilization of distinctive organizational competencies. To explore the potential IS linkage to or...
The company's performance must be continuously improved to be able to face the increasingly fierce global competition. The improvement of the company's performance can be made by implementing supply chain practices. The implementation of supply chain practice is a policy set by the company's top management by making the system integrated. Integration of all functions, internally and externally, is done by using integrated information technology. This study takes data from companies in East Java,...
This paper revisits the exchange rate pass‐through (ERPT) to inflation in Nigeria and South Africa by incorporating structural breaks and using time series variables, namely the consumer price index, nominal effective exchange rate, gross domestic product, and crude oil price. Based on the Maki cointegration test and a flexible estimation approach of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, our empirical evidence suggests that the long‐ and short‐run ERPT to inflation is complete for Nig...
The objective of this paper to examined the effects of Dynamic Information Technology Capabilities (DITCs) on organizational performance using data from the Nigerian banking sector. The DITC dimensions include Information Technology (I.T) Knowledge, IT Management, IT Personnel Expertise and IT Infrastructures.Cross-sectional survey research design was used in the study. Population of the study consists of 191 employees of deposit money banks and 155 employees’ were drawn as sample size for the s...
