Doctoral Dissertation Research: Information Technology and New Organization Forms: A Study of IT Adoption and Use among Mass Merchandisers, 1982-1986

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ABSTRACT Information Technology and New Organization Forms: A Longitudinal Study of US Mass Merchandisers: 1980-1996 This dissertation research examines three aspects of the relationship between information technology (IT) and organizations: the adoption and spread of IT-intensive organization forms throughout an industry group, the strategic use of IT, and the impact of IT on and management practices and organization structures. The specific research questions are: Whether the adoption of IT by mass merchandisers is driven primarily by the firms' strategic intentions, by competitive pressures, or by industry associations and standard-setting bodies. How mass merchandiser's use IT to achieve sustained competitive advantage. When and how IT has been responsible for radically-new or incrementally-improved organization forms, i.e. job design, task-flow processes, managerial practices, decision-making, etc. The empirical work on this dissertation is based on a new, unique dataset consisting of full-text articles and annual reports describing organizational restructurings and strategic reorientations that were facilitated by the implementation of IT (e.g. network and telecommunications systems, e-mail, the internet and world-wide web, database and software applications, and hardware). Findings are validated against `hard` measures of firms' operating efficiencies. This dissertation is embedded in the Research Project on New Organizational Forms for the Information Age (NOFIA), a collaborative endeavor of leading organizational scholars in Europe, Asia, and North America. The NOFIA project is led by Professor Arie Y. Lewin, Director of the Center for Research on New Organization Forms, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. The project's overall goals are to chronicle the evolution of the new dominant organizational forms and anticipate their dimensions.