Research On Formation Mechanism Of Informatization Leadership And Its Impact On Competitive Advantage

With the increasing popularity and maturity of the Internet, the Next Generation Internet,Web2.0, Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, Networking and other advanced informationtechnologies are emerging, more and more organizations and individuals involve in thedigitization of the value creation process. Human society enters into a filled with data,information, advanced information technology in the new century. There are no traditionalindustries or sunset industry today, but there are endless innovation and subversion of the oldmodel. The failure happens from day to day, while the miracle occurs from time to time.Each leader’s decision will lead the business success or failure.On the one hand, under the new background, advanced information technologies impact ontraditional leadership and it is still growing. On the other hand, along with the ever-changingIT and business relations, the strategic value of information technology is constantlyupgrading. In addition, through the application of information technology to maintain theircompetitive advantages of enterprises and to obtain new competitive advantages areincreasingly common phenomenon. In fact, a growing number of business leaders have toface the current challenges which continue to change with the emergence of advancedinformation technologies brought on organizational operations, management, and businessmode and so on. At the same time, this new background requires Leadership throughinnovation to maintain their competitive advantage, or to obtain new competitive advantages.The new corporate leadership background has put forward a new strategic dimension, or hasput forward a new connotation for corporate leadership; IT strategic value and improvecorporate leadership has present a perspective based on the information of the observation,or has raised new challenges for corporate leadership; the importance of a competitiveadvantage for enterprises has provided leadership to guide the organization a valid businessobjectives, or has put forward new requirements for corporate leadership.This new content, the new challenge, and new requirement emphasize the strategic thinkingof information technology and the ability to control the informatization activities ofenterprises, and this paper names it as "Informatization Leadership."This paper reviews all the literature related to informatization leadership, selected out of231papers on informatization leadership, and according to different research themes werediscussed in detail. By exploring the role of business leaders in informatization activitiesshould be played in the process, informatization leadership was analyzed based on theprocess perspective and the subjective perspective. And the concept of informatizationleadership is the ability to lead the organization to correctly deploy, configure, blendinformation technology, so that showing better responds to the challenges of informatization, specifically in the business leaders through face, cognition, learning, adoption of informationtechnology, to make decisions, organize, coordinate, promote, protect corporateinformatization activities, so that individual, group, or even the organization itself has apositive change in the way of thinking, work behavior, job performance, with the ultimategoal is to help companies gain competitive advantages. Meanwhile, the proposedinformatization leadership in five dimensions–Informatization Awareness and InformationLiteracy, Informatization Strategic Decision Ability, Informatization OrganizationalCoordination Ability, Informatization Propulsion Control Ability, and InformatizationResources Guarantee Ability. Then the measurement of informatization leadership was givenand verified.Based on antecedent analysis, internal analysis and process analysis, the formationmechanism model of informatization leadership was proposed, namely informatizationleadership is formatted during the construction process of informatization which can alsocalled “Learning by Doing”, specifically through theoretical study and practical learningmethods, completing the knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer, knowledge transform,knowledge accumulation and knowledge innovation. The reason why a leader has thebehavior of Informatization is that the leader’s brain has a message of motivation, whichdetermines the leader’s behavior by influencing behavior intention. And the leader has themotivation of informatization is subject to the demand-driven of internal conditions and tothe incentive effect of external conditions. The demand-driven of internal conditions here istacit knowledge, while the incentive effect of external conditions here is IT resources.Meanwhile, tacit knowledge can influence the leader by awareness and let the leaders of themotivation to produce informatization. In this way, tacit knowledge and IT resources as keyantecedents in the formation process of informatization leadership have played a very greatrole. Through empirical research, designed a questionnaire and collected181validquestionnaires, the formation mechanism model of informatization leadership wasdemonstrated. It was found that Informatization Awareness and Information Literacy ismainly formed by the experience, Informatization Strategic Decision Ability is mainlyformed by IT relationship resouces, Informatization Organizational Coordination Ability ismainly formed by IT human resources, Informatization Propulsion Control Ability is mainlyformed by organizational culture, and Informatization Resources Guarantee Ability is mainlyformed by IT technical resources, professional background also plays a role on the formationof informatization leadership.Based on informatization leadership directly effecting on competitive advantages analysisand indirectly effecting on competitive advantages analysis, the effecting mechanism wasdemonstrated. By introducing IT to support their core capabilities as a mediating variable,dynamic environment as the moderator, the mechanism model of informatization leadershipeffecting on competitive advantages was presented. Through empirical research, designed aquestionnaire and collected353valid questionnaires, the mechanism model of informatization leadership effecting on competitive advantages was demonstrated. Theresults show that there is a positive correlation between informatization leadership andcompetitive advantages, IT support of core competence in which plays an importantintermediary role; at the same time, environmental dynamism has significant regulatory role.In a dynamic environment, informatization leadership directly impacts on IT support of corecompetence, and thus indirectly affects the competitive advantage; in a static environment,informatization leadership can directly affect the competitive advantage.In a stable business environment, there are two paths of informatization leadership toenhance the competitive advantages, namely a) informatization leadership affectscompetitive advantages directly, b) informatization leadership affects competitive advantagesthrough IT support of core competence. Exploring implementation mechanisms behind this,this study suggests that, when the market has less competitive, strengthening the corecompetence of urgency is not prominent, IT and management activities in the combinedenterprise, are often able to maintain or enhance their competitiveness advantage, so leaderscan make decisions related to the behavior of IT adoption, and other information in theenterprise can bring a competitive advantage to companies directly.In a dynamic business environment, informatization leadership does not have a direct impacton competitive advantage, but the mediating variable has an impact on competitiveadvantage through IT support enterprise core competencies, namely in a dynamicenvironment, informatization leadership enhancing competitive advantage has only one path,namely informatization leadership affects competitive advantages through IT support of corecompetence. Explore implementation mechanisms behind this, this study suggests that, whenthe market environment is full of competition, competition among enterprises are mainly onthe resources and capabilities, so only focusing and strengthening their core capabilities andability to support their core IT talent to win. Business leaders must find a breakthrough toobtain competitive advantages on a strategic level, and when IT is selected as thisbreakthrough, it must be able to support the core competence in order to give companies acompetitive advantage.In addition, after the validation of informatization leadership’s formation mechanism andinformatization leadership effecting on competitive advantages’ mechanism, two proposalswere presented–how to enhance the leaders’ informatization leadership and how to useinformatization leadership to help the enterprise to obtain competitive advantages.From the perspective of Leaders enhancing their own informatization leadership, the leaderis only concerned about the "Inner Improvement"-tacit knowledge, while trying to"Learning by Doing"-emphasizing on the importance of learning, so that leaders canenhance their informatization leadership. On the one hand, leaders should fully enhanceindividual and organizational tacit knowledge; on the other hand, leaders not only need toparticipate in the enterprise informatization construction process, more importantly, leaders must learn to keep a heart to learn, which means keeping learning in informatization process.In fact, only through the theoretical learing and practical learning, a leader can truly changeknowledge, and experience into informatization leadership.From the perspective of using informatization leadership to help the enterprise to obtaincompetitive advantages, the leaders should realize how to apply IT in different environments,and focus IT applications on the core business with the BPR method. On in this way, leaderscan show their strong informtazaiton leadership and effect on competitive advantages inorder to ultimately lead the business profitable and success.