Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> This paper defines and operationalizes eight ERP competence constructs. We define ERP competence as a portfolio of managerial, technical and organizational skills and expertise posited as antecedents to improved business performance occurring after an ERP system is operational and functionally stable. To improve responses to changes in markets and products, manufacturers are increasingly adopting ERP systems. However, anecdotal accounts indicate that the realization of ERP's potential benefits is rare. Because of its pervasive influence on manufacturing and business performance, the need for scientifically developed and tested multi-item scales pertaining to ERP competence is highly relevant to manufacturing strategy research. We follow a two-stage normative process of scale development. First, we identify a portfolio of eight generic constructs that are hypothesized to be associated with successful ERP adoption. Each construct is then operationalized as a multi-item measurement scale by applying a manual item sorting technique iteratively to independent panels of expert judges until tentative reliability and validity is established. Second, we further refine and validate the multi-item scales using survey data from 79 North American manufacturing users of ERP systems. <s> BIB001 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> Executives make few moves more critical than their decisions about which technology-infrastructure investments will promote future strategic agility. ::: ::: To pinpoint best practices, three IT experts marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One finding was that when companies describe their IT-infrastructure capabilities as services instead of equipment (say, the provision of a fully maintained laptop computer with access to all company systems and the Internet), they do a better job of putting a value on what they are buying. ::: ::: Understanding the 70 IT-infrastructure services that emerge consistently from the research can help executives identify which investments will make sense for which strategic business initiative. And understanding whether the contemplated initiative is supply-side, internally focused or demand-side can help managers decide whether to make the infrastructure investment on a business-unit level or enterprisewide. ::: ::: The authors find that leading companies are making regular, systematic, modular and targeted IT-infrastructure investments on the basis of overall strategic direction. If other companies can learn to recognize which IT-infrastructure capabilities are needed for which kinds of initiatives, they can have some assurance that the investments they make today will serve the strategies of tomorrow. <s> BIB002 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> Information systems researchers have a long tradition of drawing on theories from disciplines such as economics, computer science, psychology, and general management and using them in their own research. Because of this, the information systems field has become a rich tapestry of theoretical and conceptual foundations. As new theories are brought into the field, particularly theories that have become dominant in other areas, there may be a benefit in pausing to assess their use and contribution in an IS context. The purpose of this paper is to explore and critically evaluate use of the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) by IS researchers. ::: ::: The paper provides a brief review of resource-based theory and then suggests extensions to make the RBV more useful for empirical IS research. First, a typology of key IS resources is presented, and these are then described using six traditional resource attributes. Second, we emphasize the particular importance of looking at both resource complementarity and moderating factors when studying IS resource effects on firm performance. Finally, we discuss three considerations that IS researchers need to address when using the RBV empirically. Eight sets of propositions are advanced to help guide future research. <s> BIB003 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> The role of information systems in the creation and appropriation of economic value has a long tradition of research, within which falls the literature on the sustainability of IT-dependent competitive advantage. In this article, we formally define the notion of IT-dependent strategic initiative and use it to frame a review of the literature on the sustain- ability of competitive advantage rooted in information systems use. We offer a framework that articulates both the dynamic approach to IT-dependent strategic advantage currently receiving attention in the literature and the underlying drivers of sustainability. This framework models how and why the characteristics of the IT-dependent strategic initiative enable sustained competitive advantage, and how the determinants of sustainability are developed and strengthened over time. Such explanation facilitates the pre-implementation analysis of planned initiatives by innovators, as well as the post-implementation evaluation of existing initiatives so as to identify the basis of their sustainability. ::: ::: In carrying out this study, we examined the interdisciplinary literature on strategic information systems. Using a structured methodology, we reviewed the titles and abstracts of 648 articles drawn from information systems, strategic management, and marketing literature. We then examined and individually coded a relevant subset of 117 articles. The literature has identified four barriers to erosion of competitive advantage for IT-dependent strategic initiatives and has surfaced the structural determinants of their magnitude. Previous work has also begun to theorize about the process by which these barriers to erosion evolve over time. Our review reveals that significant exploratory research and theoretical development have occurred in this area, but there is a paucity of research providing rigorous tests of theoretical propositions. ::: ::: Our work makes three principal contributions. First, it formalizes the definition of IT-dependent strategic initiative. Second, it organizes the extant interdisciplinary research around an integrative framework that should prove useful to both research and practice. This framework offers an explanation of how and why IT-dependent strategic initiatives contribute to sustained competitive advantage, and explains the process by which they evolve over time. Finally, our review and analysis of the literature offers the basis for future research directions. <s> BIB004 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> The market enthusiasm generated around investment in CRM technology is in stark contrast to the naysaying by many academic and business commentators. This raises an important research question concerning the extent to which companies should continue to invest in building a CRM capability. Drawing on field interviews and a survey of senior executives, the results reveal that a superior CRM capability can create positional advantage and subsequent improved performance. Further, it is shown that to be most successful, CRM programs should focus on latent or unarticulated customer needs that underpin a proactive market orientation. <s> BIB005 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> Recent innovations in utility computing, web services, and service-oriented architectures, combined with a growing array of IT skills, have improved firms' ability to be more agile in responding to change. Using the resource-based view of the firm, prior research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the question becomes how to configure IT resources to prepare for, or react to, change. In this paper, we posit that managerial IT capabilities based on IT-business partnerships, strategic planning, and ex-post IT project analysis lead to the development of technical IT capabilities associated with a flexible IT infrastructure which in turn drives agility or a firm's ability to react to change in its products and markets. Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we find that managerial and technical capabilities affect agility. In further testing, we reveal that in a stable setting, technical IT capabilities are more important to agility than managerial IT capabilities, while in a dynamic setting, the opposite is true. Thus, for firms operating in volatile markets, effective models of managerial IT governance are essential for delivering superior agility or adaptiveness. <s> BIB006 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> ES Competence <s> Understanding how IT contributes to a firm's competitive advantage has long been of interest. While managers have made significant investments in IT, inflexible legacy systems hinder their ability to respond quickly to market opportunities. Our study examined how the flexibility of an organization's IT infrastructure enhanced information generation and dissemination and that this increased their ability to respond to rapidly changing environments. Our discussion of these information building and information leveraging effects was grounded in the resource-based view of the firm. We empirically tested our model using data collected from senior executives of 105 manufacturing and service firms. We found that IT infrastructure flexibility was positively related to information generation and dissemination. Moreover, information generation was significantly related to organizational responsiveness. Finally, organizational responsiveness was positively related to the firm's competitive advantage. These results showed the importance of developing a flexible IT infrastructure that can be quickly adapted and reconfigured to meet information processing demands in dynamic environments. <s> BIB007
The creation of ES-enabled sensing and responding capabilities depends on the quality of the ES infrastructure an organization has put in place. Enterprise systems are not simple IT solutions but include the dexterous combination of human-and business-related competencies BIB005 . ES competence refers to the quality of the ES infrastructure. For the purpose of this research, we focus on the ES competences developed after the adoption and during the continuance of ES use  . As enterprise systems are regarded as the most prominent development of information systems, we draw from the IS competences literature to define ES competences. A review of the literature has resulted in the identification of two fundamental dimensions of IS competences: technical infrastructure competence and human and managerial competences BIB007 BIB004 BIB006 BIB003 . These dimensions are summarized in Table 6 . Systems interoperability and integration, seamless access via common user interface Turner, 2000, 2001; BIB004 BIB001 BIB006 BIB003 BIB002 Software modularity Rapid software development, reusable code, software portability across systems, ability Network connectivity Ability to expand or contract network reach, remote access to shared data pools, adaptable links to internal and external parties Human and managerial competences