Information Technology Competencies, Organizational Agility, and Firm Performance: Enabling and Facilitating Roles

Author List: Grewal, Rajdeep; Sambamurthy, Vallabh;
Information Systems Research, 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4, Page 976-997.
The hypercompetitive aspects of modern business environments have drawn organizational attention toward agility as a strategic capability. Information technologies are expected to be an important competency in the development of organizational agility. This research proposes two distinct roles to understand how information technology competencies shape organizational agility and firm performance. In their enabling role, IT competencies are expected to directly enhance entrepreneurial and adaptive organizational agility. In their facilitating role, IT competencies should enhance firm performance by helping the implementation of requisite entrepreneurial and adaptive actions. Furthermore, we argue that the effects of the dual roles of IT competencies are moderated by multiple contingencies arising from environmental dynamism and other sources. We test our model and hypotheses through a latent class regression analysis on data from a sample of 109 business-to-business electronic marketplaces. The results provide support for the enabling and facilitating roles of IT competencies. Moreover, we find that these dual effects vary according to environmental dynamism. The results suggest that managers should account for (multiple) contingencies (observed and unobserved) while assessing the effects of IT competencies on organizational agility and firm performance.
Keywords: organizational agility;IT competencies;latent class regression
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#80 0.222 organizations new information technology develop environment challenges core competencies management environmental technologies development emerging opportunities levels based change business technical
#59 0.214 capabilities capability firm firms performance resources business information technology firm's resource-based competitive it-enabled view study value infrastructure results organizational model
#197 0.166 agility capital substitution non-it enablers significant inhibitors link dynamism does agile labor executives enabling dual adaptive contrast substitute practices literature
#285 0.099 effects effect research data studies empirical information literature different interaction analysis implications findings results important set large provide using paper
#218 0.090 role roles gender differences women significant play age men plays sample differ played vary understand critical greater implications relatively offered
#1 0.082 organizational organizations effectiveness factors managers model associated context characteristics variables paper relationships level attention environmental technological based maturity organization's relationship