Information Technology Usage and Project Performance: The Mediating Role of Process Capabilities

The impact of information technology on improving the productivity of knowledge and information-intensive work has been mixed. Prior research has primarily focused on the impact of IT spending on firm-level performance. To further this line of research, it is necessary to understand the operational and process-level changes, and isolate the impact of IT application usage on process-level capabilities associated with information work. We focus at the level of business process in information work contexts and measure the impact of IT usage on organizational performance based on business process-level measures such as project cycle time, cost, and completion rates. The central research contribution is the development of an empirically validated research framework to improve our understanding of the operational impact of technology on the effectiveness of information work. Our results indicate that the impact of IT on project performance is mediated through its enablement of process capabilities which explains differences in process-level performance across a cross-section of companies.