Authors: EBaraldi;
This thesis investigates the interplay between information technology (IT) and the other resources in business networks. IT tools and systems are important facilities that firms utilize in several managerial tasks. Investments in IT have been massive for the last 40 years, even if the actual effects of using IT tools seldom correspond to the expectations. Therefore, this thesis addresses two main issues: (1) how does IT affect the surrounding resources? and (2) how does the value of IT emerge in relation to these resources? This study applies to these issues a business network theoretical framework that relies on four core concepts: resources (viewed as heterogeneous and interacting within “resource networks”), information (viewed as a meta-element that represents “concrete” resources), IT systems (viewed as facilities that digitalize information into “digital meta-networks”), and managerial tasks (the restricted arenas where IT is applied to handle certain specific resources).
The empirical setting consists of two “twin” case studies that present how the furniture retailer IKEA and the furniture producer Edsbyn use IT tools to handle various tasks concerning the products of these two firms. More precisely, the empirical material concerns IKEA’s coffee table Lack and Edsbyn’s electrically adjustable table El-Bord. Personal interviews (130 in all) and many visits to the premises of several firms were used to create a detailed picture of the resources, information patterns, and IT tools intervening in twelve managerial tasks (six for each product) that were selected for a deeper analysis. The effects and the value of IT in each of these managerial tasks are viewed as emerging from the interplay between IT and the other resources (products, facilities, business units, and business relationships) that embed the IT facilities.
The effects of IT on the above resources vary greatly across the twelve managerial tasks that were grouped into two categories, exploitative and explorative. In exploitative tasks (aiming to efficiently utilize given resources), the informative and the concrete effects of IT are comparatively stronger, thanks to highly relevant digital models embedded within IT systems and thanks to highly routinized and structured information patterns (the input required by IT facilities). Conversely, IT has restricted effects in explorative tasks, because (1) IT tools are unable to model non-given resources and untried resource combinations, (2) IT tools are unable to handle highly network-embedded information, and (3) IT is unable to steer the non-linear development processes typical of explorative tasks. However, IT produces some (mostly informative) effects that stabilize exploration, such as formalizing ex ante and freezing ex post the involved resources: IT creates “islands of certainty” in “a sea of uncertainty”.
As for the value of IT, there exist no perfect IT tool in relation to the many and conflicting resources handled within managerial tasks – tasks that stretch across the boundaries of firms, embracing external resources. Even technically downscaled IT systems can act as highly proficient tools if favourably embedded by the other resources. The value and contribution of IT appear more evident in exploitative tasks, where IT can more easily model the involved resources and digitalize the needed information: in such tasks, IT structures resources and automates activities, as required for maintaining efficiency in resource utilization. In explorative tasks, instead, the stability created by IT entails a conservative force, because IT only displays established resource combinations, while blocking wholly new ones.
Publish Year: 2003