A New Perspective on IT Capabilities and Firm Performance: Focusing on Dual Roles of Institutional Pressures

Abstract

To provide a fundamental understanding on the inherent relationship between IT capabilities and sustainable firm heterogeneity, we investigate the dual roles that institutional pressures play, namely, as antecedents of IT capabilities and as moderator of the relationship between IT capabilities and IT innovation success, where IT innovation success plays a mediating role between IT capabilities and firm performance. The structural model was tested, and the results of the PLS analysis provided general support for the proposed hypotheses. IT capabilities had an indirect effect mediated by IT innovation success on firm performance. With IT activities assumed to be embedded in the institutional context, the dual roles of institutional pressures are verified. This study contributes to the literature on IT capabilities by considering both the determining role of institutional pressures on IT capabilities and the institutional context of the chain that connects IT capabilities to firm performance. The results suggest that a firm not only manages various institutional pressures to foster its IT capabilities but also adapts to different contexts with a certain level of institutional pressures to facilitate its IT capabilities and outperform its competitors, which could be sustained through IT innovation success.