Information Technology Impact and Role of Firm Age and Export Activity: An Emerging Economy Context

Abstract

This study seeks to deepen the understanding of research in business value of information technology by examining the role of contextual factors such as firm age and export activity in information technology impact following contingency theory perspective. The study is set in India and provides generalization in a new setting of emerging economy. An empirical study was conducted using data from 320 firms between 2007 and 2010. The results indicate that information technology investments enable firms to reduce their operational costs without contingencies related to firm age and export activity. However, the impact of information technology investment for improving profit is contingent on export levels such that the impact is higher for high exports firms. This work contributes to the literature by examining firm age and export activity as contextual factors and reveals the impact of information technology might be either contingent or non-contingent, subject to specific organizational outcome.

Keywords:

• Capital Productivity
• Contingency Theory Perspective
• Cost of Operations
• Export Activity
• Firm Age
• Information Technology Investment
• Profit

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gaurav Dixit

Gaurav Dixit is a team leader, strategy, at Sharda Group and currently engaged in ERP projects. He holds a doctoral degree in information systems from Indian Institute of Management Indore and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. He has over 3 years of industrial and academic experience in the IT domain. His research interests include business value of IT, IT strategy, business intelligence/analytics, and internet-based platform strategy

Prabin Panigrahi

Prabin Panigrahi is an associate professor of information systems at Indian Institute of Management, Indore, India. He received his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India on fuzzy object-oriented database management systems after completing his post graduate in computer applications from Regional Engineering College, Rourkela, India. His current research interests include the business value of information systems, business intelligence/analytics, e-governance, and e-learning.