Research On IT-enabled Process Ambidexterity Of Flexibility And Efficiency

This thesis is funded by National Nature Science Foundation and the Graduate Innovation Fund of Fudan University.With the pervasive application of information technology in organizations, research on the business value of IT remains a hot topic in academia and industry. Literature suggests that IT impacts organizational processes, which in turn lead to organizational performance. However, there exists an inherent conflict between two kinds of process performance, i.e., process efficiency and flexibility. Increase in one performance is typically associated with decrease in the other performance, which is termed by strategic management and organizational management theorists as the problem of "ambidexterity". The problem, however, has neither attracted enough attention nor be solved appropriately to date. Additionally, with the development of information systems, whether and how IT is able to lead to process ambidexterity has been an attractive yet open question with significant theoretical and practical implications. Borrowing from IT business value comprehensive model, ambidexterity theory and relational view of the firm, this paper investigates the role of IT in solving the problem of process ambidexterity.Specifically, this paper identifies two types of business processes:intra- and inter-organizational processes, to which different research methods are applied in the present study.First of all, as to the influence of IT on business process in organizations, the matched sample comparison group methodology is employed to assess the relationship between superior IT capability and process and firm performance. Sixty-five public corporations ("the strong IT enterprises") are deliberately selected from "Informatization Enterprise 500" in China are employed as the treatment sample, matched in size and industry by a carefully selected control samples of firms ("the weak IT enterprises"). By using the panel data from 2003 to 2008, our find that the process ambidexterity and several critical performance indicators of the strong IT enterprises group are superior than those of the weak IT ones, which manifests that enterprises with strong IT capability are more likely to achieve process ambidexterity, and hence higher organizational performance.Secondly, based on the research conclusions above, the influential mechanism of IT on supply chain ambidexterity is further investigated. Drawing on relational view of the firm, a path model of supply chain ambidexterity enabled by IT is developed, which suggests that inter-organizational IT integration impacts supply chain ambidexterity directly, and concomitantly the relationship is mediated by the other two relationship-specific assets:knowledge sharing and process coupling. SEM package is utilized to test multiple competing models empirically using 156 firms' samples from different parts of China. The findings reveal that interorganizational IT integration, accompanied by other relational assets, has a significant influence on supply chain ambidexterity. Alternatively, while the balance dimension of supply chain ambidexterity impacts organizational performance significantly, the combined dimension does not. The outcome indicates that the balance of supply chain efficiency and flexibility is more relevant, as opposed to increased absolute value.Three major conclusions are therefore drawn from the two studies earlier, that is, organizations can reach process ambidexterity by (1) strengthening IT capability, (2) investing in other inter-organizational relationship-specific assets concurrently, and (3) it is the balance of process efficiency and flexibility, rather than increase of their absolute value that matters to organizational performance.The theoretical implications of the study include the development of the process ambidexterity realization model based on ambidexterity theory, which enriches IT business value research, especially in the context of supply chain. From the perspective of practice, the study supplies a new thinking framework for management, and calls managers' attention to the conflict of process efficiency and flexibility from ambidexterity theory. Furthermore, two kinds of relational assets:relationship-specific process coupling and knowledge sharing, and the complementary relations between them and IT, have significant roles in supply chain ambidexterity and need to be highlighted. Finally, limitations of the current study and avenues for future research are discussed.