The Impact of Comprehensive Decision-Making of Information Technology Investment on Firm Performance

정보기술 투자의사결정의 포괄적 고려가 기업 성과에 미치는 영향

When firms are confronted with IT investment decision-makings, technical or financial factors are widely considered. However, based on sociotechnical systems theory, it is argued that in addition to the traditional factors, social issues must be considered in the IT investment decision-makings. Even though the strategic criteria of social issues within organization are important for IT investment decision-makings, the social or organizational issues are hardly considered in IT implementation and adoption(Ryan and Harrison, 2000). The objective of this study is to empirically verify how the comprehensive consideration of both of technical and organizational issues related with IT investment affects firm performance through its impact on IT technical capability and IT personnel skills. Senior managers of 153 Korean firms were surveyed, and the collected data were analyzed with PLS technique. The results of the PLS path analysis show that the comprehensive consideration of the technical and social issues affected indirectly firm performance through IT technical capability and IT personnel skills. It is found that the comprehensive consideration had a significant impact on IT technical capability and IT personnel skills, and that IT technical capability and IT personnel skills affected firm performance. IT personnel was also found to affect IT technical capability. Finally, this study found that the consideration of social factors had greater impacts on firm performance than that of technical factors.