Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 67-95 / June 2019 67
doi: 10.17705/1pais.11204 Volume 11, Issue 2
The Role of IT and Organizational Capabilities on Digital
Business Value
Christian Riera
1
, Junichi Iijima
2
1
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, christian.riera@gmail.com
2
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, iijima.j.aa@m.titech.ac.jp
Abstract
The opportunities and threats that digital technologies like SMACIT (Social, Mobile,
Analytics, Cloud and Internet of Things) bring to organizations are increasingly
being explored by the academia and industry. Organizations face the challenge
not only to use new technologies but to gain competitive advantage from such
embracement in order to stay relevant in the market. This study aims to provide
practical insights on how Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can prepare to
embrace Digital Technologies. For this, it proposes that a combination of both IT
and Organizational capabilities can be the foundation for achieving Business Value
with Digital Technologies or “Digital Business Value”. IT capabilities are evalu ated
by the IT capability maturity framework (IT-CMF) and Organizational Intelligence
Quotient (Mendelson and Pillai, 1999) is used to evaluate organizational
capabilities. Digital Business Value is defined as the achievement of business
objectives using Digital Technologies (Riera & Iijima, 2017). The target population
was one hundred Japanese SMEs which were awarded by The Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry due to their effective utilization of IT supporting
business performance in the list of “Competitive IT Strategy SME Selection 100”
over the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. Data collection was done with questionnaires
sent to all the awarded organizations and collected 34 responses. A quantitative
approach was used and the data analysis was done with correlation and regression
analysis. Empirical evidence demonstrated that IT and Organizational capabilities
are linked to Digital Business Value. A subset of IT capabilities like Risk
Management, Business Planning among others was indeed related to Digital
Business Value. In addition, Internal Knowledge Dissemination and Continuous
Innovation dimensions from Organizational IQ showed relationship with Digital
Business Value. This study unveiled that the combination of IT and Organizational
capabilities leverage the value from Digital technologies. The outcomes from this
study may be of reference to SMEs that look to embrace Digital Technologies as
it shows which particular capabilities may be of interest for developing. This study
extends the Digital Transformation literature in particular how dynamic capabilities
work together in order to enable Digital Business Value.
Keywords: Digital Business Value, IT Capabilities, SME IT-CMF, Organization IQ,
Dynamic Capabilities
Citation: Riera, C., & Iijima, J. (2019). The Role of IT and Organizational Capabilities on Digital
Business Value. Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 11 (2), 67-95.
doi: 10.17705/1pais.11204
Copyright © Association for Information Systems.
1
Riera and IIJIMA: The Role of IT and Organizational Capabilities on Digital Busines
Published by AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), 2019
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