【作者】 王东清；

【导师】 罗新星；

【作者基本信息】 中南大学 ， 管理科学与工程， 2008， 博士

【摘要】 信息技术(IT,Information Technology)突飞猛进的发展,大大降低了企业对信息的获取、分析和做出反应所需要的时间与空间的限制,正在深刻地影响着企业的组织变革和核心业务调整的能力。从20世纪70年代开始,世界各国对信息技术的投资规模越来越大,但是,许多企业实践的经历和学者研究的结果却表明,巨额的投资似乎并不总能转变为企业经营绩效的提高或者带来以超额收益体现的竞争优势,投资失败的例子不胜枚举,IT投资对产出和企业绩效的影响已日益引起研究人员和企业管理人员的关注。针对IT投资是否贡献于企业绩效的问题,早期基于国家和行业层面的IT投资绩效研究并未获得生产率显著提高的正向结论,虽然20世纪90年代以后的大部分研究似乎肯定了IT投资的绩效贡献,但却无法解释不同企业相同水平的IT投资为什么会出现巨大的利润率差异这个问题。为此,越来越多的研究者注意到,管理能够部分地解释IT投资回报的差异性,并认同企业的IT设施与其他组织资源和能力结合在一起形成的IT能力才是持续竞争优势的源泉这一观点。但是迄今为止,还很少有学者从IT能力的具体构成方面研究它是通过怎样的机制使企业获得持续竞争优势的,并且IT能力对企业绩效贡献的实际证据依然不足。事实上,由于存在中间途径变量的影响,同一水平的IT投资所产生的企业绩效并不一定相同,因此,我们需要从更深层次的企业内部原因对IT投资所产生的业绩效应进行分析和理解,以便更好地回答IT能否以及如何为组织带来持续性竞争优势的问题。本研究从战略管理角度出发,以注重企业内在成长的能力理论为基础主要在如何理解中国特定情境下的企业IT能力构成及其绩效贡献的问题上进行了探索性的研究,重点探讨了IT能力的具体构成及其对提升企业竞争力的作用。本研究包括理论的规范推理和实证检验两大部分,规范推理部分主要是在梳理大量理论文献的基础上形成理论预设和初步的理论框架,实证检验部分则是针对这些理论预设和框架进行理论验证,通过对有效数据的统计分析检验相关的研究假设,最后得到研究结论。为了探讨特定情境下的企业IT能力构成,本文在梳理大量有关文献的基础上,基于企业能力理论提出了一个IT能力的概念模型,将IT能力区分为IT基础能力、IT作业能力、IT协调能力和IT发展能力等逐级递进的能力层次,并运用这一模型从IT投资的资产转化过程、IT资产的有效使用过程、外部环境影响IT绩效的过程等方面对IT能力的逐级构成机理进行了分层次的详细论述。进一步地,本文根据IT能力阶层概念模型构建了IT能力的测量模型,并以此为基础开发测量题项形成测量量表,采用调查问卷的方式收集数据对IT能力测量量表的信度和效度进行了实证分析,验证量表的可信度和稳定性。为了探讨特定情境下的企业IT能力的绩效贡献问题,本文借助IT能力阶层概念模型对IT投资绩效形成逻辑所进行的理论解析,提出了IT能力与企业绩效关系的研究模型,为了检验这一模型,需要取得有效的研究数据,而鉴于通过问卷调查难以获得源自IT能力的竞争绩效数据,本研究选择了有公开报告的财务会计数据的上市公司作为样本来源检验IT能力与企业绩效的关系,采用对照组研究的方法对假设予以检验。参考过去采用会计绩效测度方法的大量文献构造了IT投资绩效的表征变量,从会计收益指标、会计成本指标和基于会计数据的企业运营效率指标等方面考察了IT投资对企业竞争绩效的贡献。本研究通过严谨的规范推理和实证研究过程获得对我国企业具有指导意义的结论是:IT投资可以通过一定的机制实现企业能力的提升,这种机制的核心就是IT能力,IT能力体现在包括IT基础能力、IT作业能力、IT协调能力和IT发展能力在内的从低级到高级的4个层次的能力维度上,较低层次能力对高层次能力起到支持作用,它们共同决定了IT能力的建立和培育,企业IT能力4个层次能力维度的形成是由IT内部的转化过程、IT内部的使用过程以及IT外部的竞争过程逐步完成的。具有卓越IT能力的企业能够获得比其他企业相对更高的收益回报和相对更低的成本费用开支,即当企业IT投资转化为IT能力时,它与经营绩效之间存在显著的正相关关系,IT投资转化为经营绩效是一个IT与组织其它相关资源和能力有效支持匹配即IT能力塑造的过程。更多还原

【Abstract】 With the rapid development of information technology(IT), the restriction of time and space for an enterprise to acquire, analyze and respond to economic information is greatly reduced, and now the organizational innovations and core business adjustments of a firm are affected by IT profoundly. From the seventies of 20 century, the scale of IT investment expanded increasingly all over the world. However, a large number of practical cases and research conclusions show that huge investments would not be always turned into enormous profits or super profit. Increasingly, the effects of IT investment on firm performance bring researchers’ and managers’ great attention.In view of whether IT investment act on firm performance, early studies based on average IT investment and average output didn’t acquire the conclusions that productivity increased significantly. Though a large number of research work completed during the nineties of 20 century showed that IT indeed improved firm performance, gigantic discrepancy of profit rate among different enterprises pushes the research work forward to solve the problem that how to use IT effectively in order to get the competitive advantage. More and more researchers recognized that management can explain the difference of IT investment performance, they agreed that IT capability formed by IT infrastructure and other organizational resources is the source of firm competitive advantage. Yet few studies inquired into the deep theory that how an enterprise acquire it’s sustained competitive advantage through IT capability.In fact, the variance of IT investment performance among different enterprises stems from the influence of intermediate variables. So, in order to answer the question of whether and how IT investment contributes to firm’s sustained competitive advantage we should analyze and understand IT investment performance from a deeper level of firm’s internal reason. From a strategic point of view of management and based on enterprise competence theory which pay close attention to firm’s internal growth, this study starts pioneering work to solve the problem of the structure of firm IT capability and it’s contribution to the achievement in the circumstances of Chinese specific situations.The research process of this study includes normative reasoning and empirical testing. The aim of the normative reasoning is to form the initial framework of the theory on the basis of large number of theoretical literature, while empirical testing aims to test against the previous theoretical framework through statistical analysis of effective data. To explore corporate IT capability in the circumstances of specific context, the paper advances a model of the concept of IT capability on the basis of enterprise competence theory with a large number of literature review. This model divides IT capacity into 4 progressive dimensions which are as follows: IT fundamental capability, IT task capability, IT coordination capability and IT development capability. Also the paper uses this model to analyze the structure mechanism of firm IT capability from the assets conversion process of IT investment, the effective use process of IT assets and the external environment impact processes of IT performance. Further, the paper constructs a measurement model for IT capability under the concept model of IT capability and uses the model to develop measurement item which is the basis of forming measurement scale. Later an empirical analysis is conducted to verify the credibility and stability of the measurement scale by using a questionnaire to collect data to test the reliability and validity of the measurement scale. To explore IT capability contributing to firm performance in the circumstances of specific context, this paper uses IT capability conceptual model to analyze the formation logic of IT investment performance and raises a research model of relationship between IT capability and business performance. In order to test this model, this study chooses a public report of the financial accounting data of listed companies as a source of samples and a matched-sample comparison group methodology is used to test the previous hypothesis. Through referring to large number of past use of performance measurement method of accounting literature this study constructs the proxy variables of IT investment performance. From the accounting earnings variables, accounting costs variables and enterprise operating efficiency variables based on the accounting data the paper inspects whether the IT investment contribute to the competitive performance of enterprises.Through strict normative reasoning and empirical research process, this study may draw the conclusions which have guiding significance to China’s enterprises: IT investment can enhance the capacity of enterprises through special mechanism which is recognized as IT capability. IT capability reflects in four dimensions of capacity from junior to senior levels which are IT fundamental capability, IT task capability, IT coordination capability and IT development capability. And the lower level-ability play a support role to high-level ability, they jointly decided the establishment and nurture of IT capability. Corporate four-level IT capabilities are formatted gradually by the assets conversion process of IT investment, the effective use process of IT assets and the external environment impact processes of IT performance. Enterprises that have superior IT capabilities can get relatively higher income returns and lower cost of expenditure than other enterprises, that is, when corporate IT investment transferred into IT capability, there was a significant positive correlation between IT investment and firm performance . This shows that the transformation from IT investment to firm performance is a process of IT effectively supporting and matching other organizational resources and capability.更多还原