| This dissertation tries to analyze IT impacts on firm boundaries and the strategic implications of IT investment. The existing literature has focused on using transaction cost theory to analyze the IT impacts. These analyses have led to some misleading conclusions and equivocal managerial implications. This dissertation first gives an overview of the literature and points out some existing weaknesses. Next, an integrated framework for firm boundary analysis, using widely agreed-on research in industrial organization, is developed. By identifying the role of IT within such an integrated framework, this research explores and demonstrates a more complete and dynamic picture of IT impacts on firms as illustrated by two case studies. This dissertation provides new and different perspectives that can be used to look at IT impacts on the firm and thereby derive some operationalizable mechanisms for practical management of information technology. |
