Abstract
The impact of ICT in the supply chain has been given much attention in recent literature. Although ICT generally leads to performance gains, it is still unclear which specific aspects of ICT affect which specific aspects of supply chain performance. Therefore, this paper investigates the role of three subsequent ICT stages an organization can employ. It was expected that higher stages yield more benefits than lower stages. Moreover, the concept of technological uncertainty was expected to moderate these relationships. Industries with high uncertainty would benefit from the highest stage of ICT by attaining a competitive advantage, whilst firms performing in low technological uncertainty should employ lower stages. An empirical survey-based research was conducted amongst Chinese manufacturers. A supplier perspective was used and questions were related to the key buyer of the firm. Therefore, performance was measured on a dyadic level. The results show that all ICT stages lead to increased service performance, whilst no effect was found for cost performance. Additionally, a moderating effect was found between the highest stage of ICT and both types of performance. These findings confirm the positive impact of ICT and imply it has different effects on different types of performance. Moreover, ICT capability should be employed when the technological uncertainty is high, as it does not pay off in industries with low uncertainty.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Xuan and Yang, Xuerong, "ICT Stages and Moderating Effect of Technological Uncertainty" (2016). WHICEB 2016 Proceedings. 5.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/whiceb2016/5