An important management question today is whether the anticipated economic benefits of Information Technology (IT) are being realized. In this paper, we consider this problem to be measurement related, and propose and test a new process-oriented methodology for ex post measurement to audit IT impacts on a strategic business unit (SBU) or profit center's performance. The IT impacts on a given SBU are measured relative to a group of SBUs in the industry. The methodology involves a two-stage analysis of intermediate and higher level output variables that also accounts for industry and economy wide exogenous variables for tracing and measuring IT contributions. The data for testing the proposed model were obtained from SBUs in the manufacturing sector. Our results show significant positive impacts of IT at the intermediate level. The theoretical contribution of the study is a methodology that attempts to circumvent some of the measurement problems in this domain. It also provides a practical management tool to address the question of why (or why not) certain IT impacts occur. Additionally, through its process orientation, the suggested approach highlights key variables that may require managerial attention and subsequent action.

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Our goal is to assess the strategic and operational benefits of electronic integration for industrial procurement. We conduct a field study with an industrial supplier and examine the drivers of performance of the procurement process. Our research quantifies both the operational and strategic impacts of electronic integration in a B2B procurement environment for a supplier. Additionally, we show that the customer also obtains substantial benefits from efficient procurement transaction processing. We isolate the performance impact of technology choice and ordering processes on both the trading partners. A significant finding is that the supplier derives large strategic benefits when the customer initiates the system and the supplier enhances the system's capabilities. With respect to operational benefits, we find that when suppliers have advanced electronic linkages, the order-processing system significantly increases benefits to both parties.business value of IT, empirical assessment, electronic integration, electronic procurement, B2B, strategic IT impact, operational IT impact

We study the determinants of contract choice in offshore software development projects and examine how the choice of contract and other factors in the project affect project profits accruing to the software vendor. Using data collected on 93 offshore projects from a leading Indian software vendor, we provide evidence that specific vendor-, client-, and project-related characteristics such as requirement uncertainty, project team size, and resource shortage significantly explain contract choice in these projects. Our analysis suggests that contract choice significantly determines project profit. Additionally, some ex ante vendor-, client-, and project-related characteristics known at the time of choosing the contract continue to significantly influence project profits after controlling for contract choice. We also provide evidence to show that project duration and team size affect project profits.Software Development;, Offshore Contracting;, Contract Choice;, Software Outsourcing

We investigates the degree to which increasing vertical information integration using Electronic Data Interchange technology enhances shipment performance of suppliers in a Just-in-Time environment. Our analysis of shipment data in the automobile industry suggests that shipment performance degrades substantially due to increases in part variety and trading partners from diverse industries. However, investments in information technology to support both the sharing of JIT schedules and the establishment of integrated information links are related to significant reduction in the level of shipment discrepancies.manufacturing-marketing-information systems interface, Just-in-Time, EDI, logistics, quality, information technology, heterogeneous logit models

We develop an analytical framework to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing (PP), whereby firms charge different prices to different consumers based on their willingness to pay. We embed PP in a model of vertical product differentiation and show how it affects firms' choices over quality. We show that firms' optimal pricing strategies with PP may be nonmonotonic in consumer valuations. When the PP firm has high quality, both firms raise their qualities relative to the uniform pricing case. Conversely, when the PP firm has low quality, both firms lower their qualities. Although many firms are trying to implement such pricing policies, we find that a higher-quality firm can actually be worse off with PP. While it is optimal for the firm adopting PP to increase product differentiation, the non-PP firm seeks to reduce differentiation by moving in closer in the quality space. While PP results in a wider market coverage, it also leads to aggravated price competition between firms. Because this entails a change in equilibrium qualities, the nature of the cost function determines whether firms gain or lose by implementing such PP policies. Despite the threat of first-degree price discrimination, we find that PP with competing firms can lead to an overall increase in consumer welfare.

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Is the Internet a superhighway to information or a high-tech extension of the home telephone? We address this question by operationalizing information acquisition and entertainment as the use of the World Wide Web and interpersonal communication as the use of electronic mail (e-mail), and examine how 229 members of 110 households used these services during their first year on the Internet. The results show that e-mail drives people's use of the Internet. Participants used e-mail in more Internet sessions and more consistently than they used the World Wide Web, and they used e-mail first in sessions where they used both. Participants used the Internet more after they had used e-mail heavily, but they used the Internet less after they had used the Web heavily. While participants' use of both e-mail and the Web declined with time, the decline in Web use was steeper. Those who used e-mail more than they used the Web were also more likely to continue using the Internet over the course of a year. Our findings have implications for engineering and policies for the Internet and, more generally, for studies of the social impact of new technology.