Resource or Capability? A Dissection of SMEs' it Infrastructure Flexibility and its Relationship with it Responsiveness

Abstract

For SMEs, responsiveness to change is a critical survival capability. Practitioners believe that IT infrastructure flexibility contributes to responsiveness, yet empirical evidence is sparse. The purpose of this research is to empirically test the relationship between IT infrastructure flexibility, as measured on four dimensions, and IT responsiveness in SMEs context. Two research questions are answered by this study: first, does IT infrastructure flexibility help achieve IT responsiveness, and second, does each IT flexibility dimension affect IT responsiveness directly or indirectly. According to the resource-based theory, we speculate that, of the four IT flexibility dimensions, connectivity, compatibility, modularity, and IT personnel competency, only the latter two have a direct impact on IT responsiveness. Industrial data was collected from 233 SMEs and analyzed using PLS. The results confirm the positive relationship between IT infrastructure flexibility and IT responsiveness. The findings also provide evidence that the impact of connectivity and compatibility on IT responsiveness is fully mediated by modularity and IT personnel competency, which in turn affect IT responsiveness directly. The academic and practical implications of such findings are discussed.