Interorganizational relationships and innovation: An empirical investigation of the effects of IT infrastructure, task characteristics and tie strength

Interorganizational relationships (IORs) have changed the business environment in recent years. Outsourcing, cross licensing, joint ventures, strategic alliances, and other kinds of relationships are common among organizations. Organizations are driven by core business and networking which lead them to new sources of competitive advantage.; The study of the business value of information technology (IT) has been traditionally related to productivity. This tradition is recently expanded to include competitive advantage, among other business criteria. This study takes this expansion to the context of IORs at the dyadic relationship level. The focus of this study is innovation. Innovation is important to organizations because it is the main source of organizational renewal and competitive advantage.; This study investigated the effects of IT infrastructure, task characteristics, and tie strength (i.e., strength of relationships) on innovation. A survey of managers across industries in two countries, the United States and Thailand, was conducted. Two hundred forty managers participated in the survey. Reponses from these managers were examined with measurement invariance and confirmatory factory analysis to establish a psychometric equality across countries and construct validity.; The result of the study indicated that IT infrastructure indirectly benefited innovation, while task characteristics and tie strength directly benefited innovation. For academia, this result illuminates that IT infrastructure operates over the tie strength and benefited innovation. For practitioners, this study suggests that IT infrastructure indirectly benefits the organization's innovation and a balanced task design is needed to achieve a high level of innovation.