Does it pay to align a firm’s competitive strategy with its industry IT strategic role?
Authors: Yin, Jinmei; Wei, Shaobo; Chen, Xiayu; Wei, Jiuchang
Journal: Information & Management (2020)
While researchers have increasingly recognized the importance of information technology (IT) in leveraging a firm’s competitive strategy for achieving superior firm performance, our understanding of the nature of how a firm’s competitive strategy aligns with its industry IT strategic role and how such alignment influences firm performance remains empirically test how the firm’s competitive strategy (i.e., cost leadership, differentiation, and dual strategy) aligns with its industry IT strategic role to improve firm performance. Based on the data of Chinese publicly listed firms during 2009-2015, our results indicate that different competitive strategy aligns with different industry IT strategic roles for achieving superior performance. Specifically, cost leadership strategy aligns with automate IT strategic role, dual strategy aligns with informate IT strategic role, and differentiation strategy aligns with transform IT strategic role in generating superior firm performance. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the current study.