Understanding Organizational Impact of Complex IT Infrastructure through Agility: The Case of Enterprise Resources Planning Systems

This paper reports the progress of an attempt to examine how and why complex integrated IT infrastructures, such as ERP systems, impact firm performance. Based on emerging literature on agility, IT management and organizational theories, a conceptual model that describes a nomological network linking IT infrastructure characteristics, organizational culture, agility and firm performance is presented. In particular, we argue that a firm’s IT infrastructure technical characteristics, IT function skills, infrastructure complexity, and its external orientation will contribute to its potential for agility, which ultimately improves firm performance through various effective competitive actions. The proposed research methodology is also described.