Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> The resource-based view of the firm attributes superior financial performance to organizational resources and capabilities. This paper develops the concept of IT as an organizational capability and empirically examines the association between IT capability and firm performance. Firm specific IT resources are classified as IT infrastructure, human IT resources, and IT-enabled intangibles. A matched-sample comparison group methodology and publicly available ratings are used to assess IT capability and firm performance. Results indicate that firms with high IT capability tend to outperform a control sample of firms on a variety of profit and cost-based performance measures. <s> BIB001 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> Researchers and practitioners alike have taken note of the potential value of an organization's IT infrastructure. IT infrastructure expenditures account for over 58 percent of an organization's IT budget and the percentage is growing at 11 percent a year. Some even have called IT infrastructure the new competitive weapon and see it as being crucial in developing a sustained competitive advantage. Unique characteristics of an IT infrastructure determine the value of that infrastructure to an organization. One characteristic, IT infrastructure flexibility, has captured the attention of researchers and practitioners. In fact, in most recent surveys featuring issues of most importance to IT executives, the development of a flexible and responsive IT infrastructure and related topics are always at or near the top of the responses. Although the importance of IT infrastructure flexibility has been established, the development of a valid, reliable instrument to measure this construct has not been reported in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to better define the IT infrastructure flexibility construct and to develop a valid, reliable measurement instrument for this construct. In addition to the definition and operationalization of the IT infrastructure flexibility construct, this study explores the instrument's predictive validity with possible antecedent and consequent variables. <s> BIB002 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <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> BIB003 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <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> BIB004 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> During the past two decades, both business managers and academic researchers have shown considerable interest in understanding how information technologies (IT) help to create competitive advantage for a firm. While recently the idea of competitive differentiation through IT has been challenged, this study contrasts the traditional thinking about competitive advantage with the resource-based view. Specifically, it is argued that by demarcating specific types of capabilities, we can contribute to better understanding of the sources of IT-based competitive advantage. Conceptually, we distinguish here between value, competitive, and dynamic capabilities as three distinct types of capabilities. Within each type, we identify specific capabilities, such as quality of the IT infrastructure, IT business experience, relationship infrastructure, and intensity of organizational learning, and present a model that describes relationships between these capabilities and competitive advantage. We then empirically test the model using data collected via a national mail survey from chief IT executives from 202 manufacturing firms. While the quality of the IT infrastructure is hypothesized as a value capability and expectedly did not have any significant effect on competitive advantage, the quality of IT business expertise and the relationship infrastructure (competitive capabilities) did. The results of the study also indicate that the intensity of organizational learning (dynamic capability) was significantly related to all of the capabilities. These results point to the importance of delineating capabilities such as relationship infrastructure that can facilitate differentiation in the marketplace, and dynamic capabilities such as organizational learning as an important antecedent to IT capability building. <s> BIB005 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <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> BIB006 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> This study develops a research model of how the technical, behavioral, and business capabilities of IT personnel are associated with IT infrastructure capabilities, and how the latter are associated with IT-dependent organizational agility, which is conceptualized as comprising IT-dependent system, information, and strategic agility. Analysis of crosssectional data collected from 293 IT managers generally corroborates the hypothesized relationships, showing that the technical and behavioral capabilities of IT personnel have a positive effect on infrastructure capabilities. The analysis also provides evidence that the effect of infrastructure capabilities on IT-dependent strategic agility is direct, as well as mediated by IT-dependent system and information agility. The validity of the findings is strengthened by demonstrating that the hypothesized research model fits the data better than two alternative theoretically-anchored models describing different relationships between the same constructs. This study advances understanding of the interrelationships between two major subsets of IT capabilities, and their relationships with the agility afforded by IT. <s> BIB007 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> Enterprise systems (ES) are industry-specific, customizable software packages that integrate information and business process in organizations. Despite the advantages associated with implementing ES, their success has been mixed. This has attracted the interest of researchers and resulted in a proliferation of literature on implementation. However, the extant ES studies lack a theoretical framework for the examination of ES use and its implications for change in organizations. We seek to bridge this research gap by proposing a theoretical framework for change induced through ES use. This paper contributes to theory in two areas. First, by analytically separating the notions of structure, institution, and organization, we illustrate a consistent application of Giddens' structuration theory to ES use. Second, we develop a structurational model of ES-induced change that explicates the relationship between specific characteristics of ES and the nature of change occasioned through their use by human agents within a historically shaped organizational context. Towards this objective, we distinguish ES from other information systems. Implications for practitioners and researchers are presented. <s> BIB008 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> The concept of ES (enterprise system) designed to support the functionality of enterprise has a significant step forward in the long history of technology assisted business process integration. The concepts such as MRP I and MRP II. were elaborated to assist business managers by integrating various business planning processes mainly in the topics of logistics and manufacturing. The first breakthrough in the system development was the Enterprise Resources Planning management concept and application system. ERP which, like other new technologies have evaluated over several the years. It was a gradual and continuous development without considerable changes, except the SCM and APS. The radical transformation of economic environment -at the beginning of the current centaury -forced the business stakeholders to elaborate new business models and tightly aligned information technology. At present we are witnesses to and active participants of a new paradigm shift. On the business side the agility and the flexibility are the key features. On the technology (ICT) side two emerging architecture are on the horizon: the web based SOA -service oriented architecture and the BPMS -business process management suites. Our visions are that the "business and IT gap" will be disappeared in the near future, the business oriented information systems dominate the enterprises, the IT systems are the main enablers of the value chains in-and outside of the companies. <s> BIB009 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> The literature on innovation and technological change frequently reminds us that it is very difficult to improve a process that is not well understood. However, a review of past research indicates an implicit consensus that absorptive capacity is a generic organisation-level construct. This paper attempts to present a new conceptualisation of absorptive capacity, which divides absorptive capacity into two distinct levels. The first level represents the firm's general domain-neutral absorptive capacity that its employees/units possess. The second level represents the absorptive capacity in specific areas of knowledge such as customer relationship management, total quality management, knowledge management, including a more extensive discussion of supply chain management. <s> BIB010 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <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> BIB011 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> Drawing upon the resource-based view and the process-oriented view, we develop a conceptual model to examine the business value of customer relationship management (CRM) systems, using a dataset of 150 U.S. banking firms. The results show that: (1) CRM resources improve firm performance mainly through creating strategic benefits (e.g. increased customer retention, improved product and service), although there are significant operational benefits (e.g. efficiency gains and cost reduction in customer- oriented business processes); (2) in different competitive environments, the same resources play different roles in creating strategic benefits: technological resources have a weaker impact on strategic benefits in more competitive environments, while organizational alignment has a stronger impact in such environments; (3) operational benefits tend to be "competed away", while strategic benefits sustain to generate performance advantage in spite of competition. These findings provide important implications for understanding how CRM value is shaped by various resources in competitive environments. <s> BIB012 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> Being responsive is an increasingly important skill for firms in today's global economy; thus firms must be agile. Naturally, it follows that an organization's agility depends on its supply chain being agile. However, achieving supply chain agility is a function of other abilities within the organization, specifically supply chain flexibility and information technology (IT) integration. Using empirical data, we find a domino effect among IT integration, supply chain flexibility, supply chain agility, and competitive business performance. Results from this study indicate that IT integration enables a firm to tap its supply chain flexibility which in turn results in higher supply chain agility and ultimately higher competitive business performance. While these results indicate that firms should invest first in IT for integrating information before investing in flexible processes, additional research is needed. <s> BIB013 </s> Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework <s> Technical knowledge and skills <s> Agility has become a key organizational capability today as businesses face an uncertain and volatile environment. Enterprise systems, a key component of IT infrastructure in a majority of orrganizations today, have delivered cost efficiencies, control and consistent execution. Using a case study approach, this research reports on the investigation of the influence of enterprise system-enabled environment on business process agility. According to study, integration, standardization, best practices and process orientation, the key characteristics of ES-enabled environment have mixed and varying effect on business process agility and that is dependent upon the extent and type of standardization and integration implemented in the organization and the nature of business processes. Tight coupling of systems, structures and processes resulting from ES implementation restricts a firm’s ability to reconfigure and deploy business processes. The study found that the standard best practices embedded in an enterprise system do not have any direct influence on process agility. Recognizing that it is not after all necessary for all processes to be agile, study pointed out some of the challenges in identification, configuration and effective deployment of agile processes. <s> BIB014
The technical ability of IT personnel based on their specific expertise in technical areas BIB001 BIB005 BIB002 BIB007 BIB006  BIB003 BIB011 BIB004 Behavioral knowledge and skills The interpersonal and management ability of IT personnel to interact with and manage others Business knowledge and skills The ability of IT personnel to understand the overall business environment and the specific organizational context The general IS competences coupled with the unique characteristics of ES such as integrating data and business processes, standardization of providing solutions to business problems, building on modularized structure, and allowing customizations for the specific business process define the domain of ES competences BIB008 BIB009 . Therefore, extending from the literature of IS competences and based on other research on ES capabilities BIB008 Maurer, 2009; BIB003 BIB012 , we identify three dimensions of ES competences-ES technical infrastructure competence, ES human competence, and ES managerial competence (see Table 7 for the concept matrix). ES technical infrastructure competence is defined as the ability of ES technical infrastructure to deliver and support fast design, development and implementation of ES, and the ability to distribute any type of information across organizations. Two essential qualities of the ES technical infrastructure are integration and adaptability  BIB003 . Integration refers to the establishment of a collaborative platform, which allows a freeflow of information internally within the organization and externally with information systems of business partners BIB014 BIB013 . The adaptability of ES indicates the extent to which the ES can be easily (re)configurable or restructured in accordance to new conditions. The IS flexibility is assessed based on two strategies: (1) the flexibility-to-use, which refers to the features that IS supports without major modification to the IS, and (2) flexibility-to-change, which refers to the process requirements supported by IS through adjustments and modifications on the IS  . Therefore, the adaptability of ES requires both a high level of reach and richness of ES functionalities that support the business operation and the reconfigurability of the ES. The technological ES competence enables system interoperability with other enterprise systems, which may be developed by other ES vendors, or special-purpose add-on systems provided by third-party vendors  . High ES technical infrastructure competence enables a free flow of information within an organization and between the organization with its business partners in the supply chain, thus supporting a quick capture and analysis of information to identify changes more efficiently. Moreover, ES technical infrastructure competence indicates a highly flexible ES infrastructure that allows add-ons and reconfiguration of the ES system when needed; hence, it enables responsive capability. Thus: The ES human competence refers to the technical and managerial knowledge and skill of using enterprise systems in performing business process BIB012 BIB003 . This includes technical, business, and behavioral skills BIB007 . Technical skills refers to IT staff's and end-users' ability to configure, maintain, and effectively use ES respectively BIB003 . Business skills refers to the management skills and business process knowledge possessed by individuals working on ES  Maurer, 2009; BIB003 . Behavioral skills refer to the interpersonal skills of the people involved in ES, such as the ability to work cooperatively in cross-functional teams with personnel from other departments Neumann, 2007, 2009 ]. Organizations should not only develop these skills generally but also focus deeply on the ES-specific absorptive capacity BIB010 . For example, "CRM-specific absorptive capacity allow the firm to acquire, assimilate, analyze and leverage customer-specific knowledge to produce an array of tailored innovative products and services that meet the ever-changing customer needs" [Daghfous, 2007, p. 61] . ES human competence enables sensing capabilities of organizations in terms of higher knowledge transfer across different business areas in an organization, thus allowing the information to be quickly captured and analyzed. Besides, rich knowledge on ES capabilities allows a quick recall of business processes that can be supported by ES, thus enabling a higher responding capability. Therefore: The ES managerial competence refers to management's project management, change readiness, and strategic planning acumens BIB003 . Since ES are mostly provided by vendors such as SAP and Oracle, the procurement skills-the ability to learn, develop, and work with external suppliers for appropriate ES deployment-is crucial in managing ES [Maurer, 2009] . Changing business environment requires changes in business processes and technology that supports the business processes. Hence, organizations need to frequently evaluate the performance of ES, allocate resources for upgrade and maintenance, and align ES development with the overall IS and organizational strategies. With high ES managerial competence, organizations can maintain the system to be up-to-date to support any modification in organizational business processes, thus enabling sensing and responding capabilities. Thus,