Organizational Assimilation Capacity and IT Business Value

Abstract

IT business value represents important outcomes in firms (Banker & Kauffman, 2004; Gable, Darshana, & Chan, 2003; Ravichandran & Chalermsak Lertwongsatien, 2005) whereas information systems (IS) integration represents a relevant amount of the IT spending. Notwithstanding, while most firms are making major investments in information technology, particularly in information systems integration (e.g., ERP and data warehouse solutions), not all of them apply IT effectively in their business activities (Brynjolfsson, McAfee, Zhu, & Sorell, 2006; Dehning & Stratopoulos, 2003; Jason, Vijay, & Kenneth, 2003) obtaining IT business value and organizational competitive advantage. This research is based on an integrative model of IT business value, aiming to evaluate the mediating effect of an “IT organizational assimilation capacity” between IS integration and organization competitive advantage. Taking into account the theoretical premises that IT business value is generated by the exploitation of both IT and organizational resources, we develop a research model and propose two research hypotheses. The model and the related hypotheses are based on a large-scale sample survey (Francalanci & Morabito, 2006). The responses were obtained from 466 CIOs and senior business executives, who were members of the firms’ top management teams in Italian companies.