Deriving Business Value from IT Applications in Product Development: A Complementarities-Based Model - Information Technology and Product Development - page 43

Finally, our model also provides a rationale for a concerted strategic role in
IT resource commitments. Milgrom and Roberts (1995) have argued that cen-
tral strategic direction of fully coordinated moves will be especially valuable in
the presence of complementarities because partial configurations are not necessar-
ily complementary and may even be counterproductive. As a result, organizations
cannot be expected to automatically evolve toward the optimal configuration of
complementary elements.
The research implication is to reinforce the importance of robust planning pro-
cesses that link IT to strategy and that examine the link between technology and
organization during implementation. It also suggests that organizations that do
choose to engage in a less directed process of adaptation or even improvisation
(Orlikowski, 1996) should take special pains to avoid having the implementation
“freeze” (Tyre & Orlikowski, 1994) prematurely, before the optimal configuration
of complementary elements has been discovered in situ.
Orlikowski (1996) describes how the use of groupware to support help desk inci-
dent reports came to be surrounded by system of changes pertaining to employee
roles, employee training, worker evaluation policies, and distribution of work among
call specialists. The combined effects of these changes were greater than the sum of
their parts, suggesting complementarities.
The implication for managers is to enlarge the scope of technology implemen-
tation planning to consider complementarities; to be wary of concluding that a
technology has no benefits based on partial configurations; and to continually revisit
an implementation for the addition of new complementary elements, rather than
seeking to rapidly “freeze” some particular configuration.
References
Austin, R. D., Nolan, R. L., & Cotteleer, M. J. (2002). Cisco systems, Inc.: Implementing ERP .
Boston: Harvard Business School, Case #9-699-022.
Barua, A., & Mukhopadhyay, T. (2000). Information technology and business performance: Past,
present and future. In R. W. Zmud (Ed.), Framing the domains of IT management: Projecting
the future through the past . Cincinnati, OH: Pinnaflex Educational Resources.
Bharadwaj, A. S. (2000). A resource-based perspective on information technology capability and
firm performance: An empirical investigation. MIS Quarterly, 24 (1), 169-196.
Bharadwaj, A. S., Sambamurthy, V., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). IT capabilities: Theoretical perspec-
tives and empirical operationalization . Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference
on Information Systems, Charlotte, NC.
Bresnahan, T., Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. M. (2002). Information technology, workplace organi-
zation, and the demand for skilled labor: Firm-level evidence. Quarterly Journal of Economics,
117 (1), 339-376.
Brynjolfsson, E. (2003). The IT productivity gap. Optimize , 21.
Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. (1996). Paradox lost? Firm-level evidence on the returns to information
systems spending. Management Science, 42 (4), 541-558.
Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. M. (2003). Computing Productivity: Firm Level Evidence. Review of
Economics & Statistics, 85 (4), 793-808.
Brynjolfsson, E., Renshaw, A. A., & Van Alstyne, M. (1997). The Matrix of Change. Sloan
Management Review, 38 (2), 22-40.
Bylinsky, G. (2004). Not Your Grandfather s Assembly Line. Fortune, 150 (1), 136B-136H.