Research On The Interaction Between Information Systems In Firms And Complementary Resources And Effects On IT Values

As the domestic enterprises in China have established the good base of information technology infrastructures, it becomes a more important problem to hinder informationlization from going deeply that how to effectively and efficiently utilize and manage information systems in firms, and then the firms realize potential information technology business value. However in the existing IT business value literatures in IS field, there are comparatively few empirical researches to illustrate how to use IT to improve operational capability in firms and prompt resources to effectively allocate and exploit and deploy, by which business managers are difficultly guided. From the perspective of complementarity of resources, this research provides an investigation on the interaction between information technologies and complementary resources to affect business process performance. The research also makes a deep investigation on how IT business value is realized and influencing factors based on Resource-based View and Self-Organization Theory.Based on IT business value literatures review, the research emphasizes the importance of the investigation on IT business value from the process-oriented view. From the perspective of Resource-based View, the research analyzes and defines the information technology resources, information technology capability, and complementary resources—human resources and business process resources. Based on the Self-Organization Theory, the research deeply investigates the interactive mechanism of information technologies and complementary resources. According to the above analysis, the research provides the interactive process theoretical model of information technologies and complementary resources based on the process-oriented view.Customer service process in domestic financial firms is chosen. Employing survey method, the research makes a confirmatory study on the on the variances model of the interaction between information technologies in firms and complementary resources and effect on business process performance. Survey study results indicate that the interaction of IT resources and IT managerial skills, the interaction of IT resources and human resources, and the interaction of IT managerial skills and human resources truly have significant positive influence on customer service performance. Then the interaction of IT managerial skills and business process resources, the interaction of human resources and business process resources have significant positive influence on firm performance, not customer service performance. By comparing the data fit of the two structural equation models, the result indicates that the interaction of information technologies and complementary resources affects customer service performance, not IT resources, IT managerial skills, human resources, and business process resources directly affect customer service performance or firm performance. Then the interactive relationships between information technologies and complementary resources are discussed.Then the research makes a thorough investigation on the complimentary resources allocation process based on Customer Relations Management (CRM) in Bank A (China). The Case study results not only illustrate the survey study results, but also move forward to discuss organizational capability change. According to the degree of the complimentary resources contributing to IT business value, the demonstration map of the complimentary resources affecting IT business value is established.Based on the survey results and case results, the research further investigate based on IT complimentary resources allocation processes and the same principal factors, and establishes the complimentary resources allocation process based on information technology, demonstrating and discussing how IT business value is realized. Practical and academical implementations are presented in the end.