Organisational structure and value chain evolution: impacts of information technology on the insurance industry in the USA and Europe

摘要

Using interviews with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from ten insurance companies in the USA and Europe, changes to the financial services sector are studied. How the insurance industry has changed to take advantage of information technology is examined. Findings suggest that information technology is changing the insurance sector in terms of organisational forms and the structure of the industry value chain. However, the evidence shows that some organisational transformations are more complex than the ones that can be predicted by applying the frictionless paradigm. IT has also allowed some companies to operate on a global scale although the level of centralisation showed by the global groups analysed in this study is low. Comparison of the US insurance industry with their European counterparts shows that the patterns of changes are similar. However, the European firms tend to lag behind the US firms in some aspects of IT adoption and application.