EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF IT ASSETS ONPRODUCTIVITY: AN INDUSTRY LEVEL PERSPECTIVE

摘要

Does it pay to invest in IT? Research over the last two decades has resulted in mixed findings. In this study,rnwe examine the issue of IT investment impact on productivity from an industry level perspective. With IT andrnproductivity data of eight industries over 30 year, we first use the classic economic production function modelsrnto test the relationship between IT assets and productivity. Then we employ the Granger causality model torndetermine the exact nature of this relationship. Our results suggest that there is indeed a significantly positivernrelationship between IT assets and productivity, but it is more likely that the change in productivity causes thernchange in IT assets than vice versa. This finding, however, by no means implies that IT does not have impactrnon productivity. It merely shows that if IT investments have any impact on firm performance or productivity,rnit is unlikely that such impact can be directly determined statistically from the IT investment data andrnproductivity or performance data in most industries. Research on the impact of IT on intermediate businessrnprocesses may yield much more meaningful results.