Measuring Information Technology's Indirect Impact on Firm Performance

It has been recognized that the link between information technology (IT) investment and firm performance is indirect due to the effect of mediating and moderating variables. For example, in the banking industry, the IT-value added activity helps to effectively generate funds from the customer in the forms of deposits. Profits then are generated by using deposits as a source of investment funds. Traditional efficiency models, such as data envelopment analysis (DEA), can only measure the efficiency of one specific stage when a two-stage production process is present. We develop an efficiency model that identifies the efficient frontier of a two-stage production process linked by intermediate measures. A set of firms in the banking industry is used to illustrate how the new model can be utilized to (i) characterize the indirect impact of IT on firm performance, (ii) identify the efficient frontier of two principal value-added stages related to IT investment and profit generation, and (iii) highlight those firms that can be further analyzed for best practice benchmarking.