IT competencies are vital for firms to sense and appropriately respond to business opportunities and challenges. However, the volume of information that needs to be processed to understand the intricacies of opportunities and challenges demands that IT competencies help organize data. Statistical tools based on IT are necessary to analyze and predict how opportunities and challenges may impact a company and its competition. Moreover, IT-based communication tools can organize external information exchanges to support coordinated actions in the face of opportunities and challenges. By enabling real-time feedback from customers, IT-based social media tools offer filtering capabilities that organize customer opinions, leading to better anticipation of changes in market needs. Wixom and Watson (2001) emphasize that IT-based decision support systems and data warehouses help firms monitor real-time data, recognize patterns, and simulate strategic scenarios.
IT competencies enable firms to sense and interpret business opportunities and challenges. However, IT competencies also enable firms to respond to opportunities and challenges, whether those responses are proactive or reactive. Forceful reactions, which lead to Agility, involve the ability to organize business processes to seize potential opportunities. Several aspects of IT infrastructure (e.g., IT planning capabilities) and IT skills (e.g., IT human resources) help firms foresee a wide range of IT-enabled scenarios and rapidly respond to opportunities, which are aspects of Agility. Reactive responses, which lead to adaptive Agility, improve existing processes to adapt to the challenges posed by market changes. Companies can enhance their knowledge reach and quality by utilizing IT-based communication and coordination tools. That helps the company and its stakeholders comprehend and contribute to strengthening transactional processes (Overby et al., 2006).
Other IT infrastructure and capabilities elements, such as state-of-the-art IT infrastructure or technical IT skills, enable firms to defend against a wide range of disruptive IT-enabled scenarios and be resilient, leading to Agility (Chakravarty et al., 2013). In modern business environments, Agility is increasingly essential for organizational success. However, there needs to be a more comprehensive understanding of how organizations can build and leverage Agility for superior performance (Sambamurthy et al., 2003).
There is a connection between IT competencies, organizational Agility, and firm performance. Firstly, IT competencies can enable organizational Agility, whether the agile capabilities are entrepreneurial or adaptive. Secondly, IT competencies can facilitate the positive effects of entrepreneurial agility capabilities on firm performance (Chakravarty et al., 2013).
Overall, IT competencies enhance firms’ response capabilities because IT competencies increase firms’ abilities to (1) anticipate and interpret opportunities and challenges and (2) respond to opportunities and challenges proactively and reactively; they should enable both entrepreneurial Agility and adaptive Agility (Chakravarty et al., 2013).
References:
Chakravarty, A., Grewal, R., & Sambamurthy, V. (2013). Information Technology Competencies, Organizational Agility, and Firm Performance: Enabling and Facilitating Roles. Information Systems Research, 24(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2013.0500
Overby E, Bharadwaj A, Sambamurthy V (2006) Enterprise agility and the enabling role of information technology. Eur. J. Inform. Systems 15:120–131
Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj, & Grover. (2003). Shaping Agility through Digital Options: Reconceptualizing the Role of Information Technology in Contemporary Firms. MIS Quarterly, 27(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.2307/30036530
Wixom, B. H., & Watson, H. J. (2001). An empirical investigation of the factors affecting data warehousing success. MIS quarterly, 17-41.
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