An empirical study of the relationship between information technology investment and corporate productivity

This study investigates the relationship between information technology investment and corporate productivity. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was employed to classify corporations with regard to productivity, followed by a Discriminant Analysis procedure to determine if a relationship existed between the productivity classification and the information technology investment variables. A standard least squares regression model was also constructed for comparison with the DEA-discriminant results. The findings were that there is an association between the year and industry and productivity (which was expected); however, the productivity paradox could not be disconfirmed, i.e. a significant relationship between productivity and IT items was not evident.