Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697.
Business organizations are generating growing volumes of data about their employees, customers, and suppliers. Much of these data cannot be exploited for business value due to privacy and confidentiality concerns. National statistical agencies share sensitive data collected from individuals and businesses by modifying the data so individuals and firms cannot be identified but statistical utility is preserved. We build on this literature to develop a hybrid approach to data masking for business organizations. We demonstrate the validity of the hybrid approach, which we call multiple imputation with multimodal perturbation (MIMP), using Monte Carlo simulation and illustrate its application in a specific business context. Results of our analysis open new areas of research for information systems scholarship and new potential revenue sources for business organizations.
Despite the importance to researchers, managers, and policy makers of how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational performance, there is uncertainty and debate about what we know and don't know. A review of the literature reveals that studies examining the association between information technology and organizational performance are divergent in how they conceptualize key constructs and their interrelationships. We develop a model of IT business value based on the resource-based view of the firm that integrates the various strands of research into a single framework. We apply the integrative model to synthesize what is known about IT business value and guide future research by developing propositions and suggesting a research agenda. A principal finding is that IT is valuable, but the extent and dimensions are dependent upon internal and external factors, including complementary organizational resources of the firm and its trading partners, as well as the competitive and macro environment. Our analysis provides a blueprint to guide future research and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the organizational performance impacts of information technology.
Previous research has demonstrated that the production of information services can be characterized at the aggregate economy-wide level by the Cobb-Douglas production function. However, the underlying production process at the firm level has not yet been ascertained. The objective of this paper is to determine the form of the production process for information systems services at the firm level by conducting an empirical analysis of IS budget data. The production of information services is modeled using a production function with two inputs, hardware and personnel. We estimate various econometric specifications to determine several characteristics of the provision of information services, including the allocation of the information systems budget to its two largest components--hardware and personnel--and its implications for the form of the production function. After controlling for industry sector, we find that the ratio of personnel to hardware is independent of scale, which indicates a homothetic production function. We also find that the ratio of factor shares is constant with time, consistent with the Cobb-Douglas production function. We conclude that the underlying form of the production function is the same at the level of both the firm and the economy. Our analysis demonstrates how the application of production theory to the production of information services can yield useful insights from both a theoretical and managerial perspective.