ABSTRACT

While prior research has established that information technology (IT) investment has a significant impact on firm performance, relatively few studies have provided insights into the antecedents of IT investment decisions. By integrating the behavioral theory of the firm and agency theory, we propose a behavioral agency theory to explain performance shortfalls and corporate governance, which monitors and controls managers’ tendency of overinvestment or underinvestment in IT, as key drivers that jointly determine IT investment. As such, IT investment facilitates a firm’s problemistic search that generates innovation in response to performance gaps. We further examine the role of innovation outputs as a mediating mechanism linking IT investment to firm performance. Our econometric analysis of a large-scale panel dataset provides empirical evidence corroborating our theory. Overall, this study contributes a behavioral agency theory to deepen our understanding about performance drivers and outcomes of IT investment decisions.

摘要

尽管先前的研究已经确定信息技术（IT）投资对公司绩效具有重大影响，但是相对较少的研究提供了有关IT投资决策前因的见识。通过将公司的行为理论和代理理论相结合，我们提出了一种行为代理理论来解释绩效不足和公司治理，它监视和控制经理们对IT过度投资或投资不足的趋势，这是共同决定IT投资的主要驱动力。因此，IT投资有助于企业进行有问题的搜索，从而根据绩效差距进行创新。我们进一步研究了创新产出作为将IT投资与公司绩效联系起来的中介机制的作用。我们对大型面板数据集的计量经济学分析提供了证实我们理论的经验证据。总体而言，本研究有助于行为代理理论，以加深我们对绩效驱动因素和IT投资决策结果的理解。