IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/06032.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Centralization or Decentralization of Decision Rights? Impact on IT Performance of Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Takahito Kanamori
  • Kazuyuki Motohashi

Abstract

The effects of IT on the decision making structure of firms has been a topic of debate for decades. On the one hand, IT increases the information available to top management, and the coordination advantages that it provides may lead firms to centralize decision making. On the other hand, IT makes it possible to disseminate global information of the firm to line workers enabling them to make better decisions as well as enhances management's monitoring capability, favoring decentralization. In order to understand the economy wide effects of centralization and decentralization of decision rights on the productivity effect of IT, we conduct an empirical analysis to examine the change in the effects of IT performance in firms that changed its decision making structure, using a panel data set for 2,300 Japanese firms over 4 years. Our results indicate that both centralization and decentralization have a substantial productivity effect on IT for firms that changed its decision making structure and the productivity effects are more marked for firms that conducted radical change of decision rights. Moreover, we find evidence that changes in decision rights have a more pronounced productivity effect on large firms. Finally, our results show that productivity effects due to changes in decision rights are realized only in the non-manufacturing sectors. This paper sheds some light on the effects of decision rights on firms' IT performance and underscores the importance of organizational redesign accompanying IT investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Takahito Kanamori & Kazuyuki Motohashi, 2006. "Centralization or Decentralization of Decision Rights? Impact on IT Performance of Firms," Discussion papers 06032, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:06032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/06e032.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 1994. "The Firm as a Communication Network," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 809-839.
    2. Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2007. "Firm-level analysis of information network use and productivity in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 121-137, March.
    3. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    4. Larry W. Hunter & Annette Bernhardt & Katherine L. Hughes & Eva Skuratowicz, 2000. "It's Not Just the ATMs: Technology, Firm Strategies, Jobs, and Earnings in Retail Banking," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 00-31, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    5. Irene Bertschek & Ulrich Kaiser, 2004. "Productivity Effects of Organizational Change: Microeconometric Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 394-404, March.
    6. Erik Brynjolfsson & Haim Mendelson, 1997. "Information Systems and the Organization of Modern Enterprise," Working Paper Series 200, MIT Center for Coordination Science.
    7. Krishnan S. Anand & Haim Mendelson, 1997. "Information and Organization for Horizontal Multimarket Coordination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(12), pages 1609-1627, December.
    8. Masahiko Aoki, 2013. "Horizontal vs. Vertical Information Structure of the Firm," Chapters, in: Comparative Institutional Analysis, chapter 5, pages 57-58, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2000. "Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 23-48, Fall.
    10. Erik Brynjolfsson & Amy Austin Renshaw & Marshall van Alstyne, 1996. "The Matrix of Change: A Tool for Business Process Reengineering," Working Paper Series 189, MIT Center for Coordination Science.
    11. Jorgenson, Dale W. & Motohashi, Kazuyuki, 2005. "Information technology and the Japanese economy," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 460-481, December.
    12. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin Hitt, 1996. "Paradox Lost? Firm-Level Evidence on the Returns to Information Systems Spending," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 541-558, April.
    13. Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1993. "The Output Contributions of Computer Equipment and Personnel: A Firm- Level Analysis," NBER Working Papers 4540, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin David, 2012. "Modélisation non-linéaire de l'impact des TIC sur la productivité du travail," Working Papers hal-04141025, HAL.
    2. Sandulli, Francesco D. & Baker, Paul M.A. & López-Sánchez, José I., 2013. "Can small and medium enterprises benefit from skill-biased technological change?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 1976-1982.
    3. Benjamin David, 2012. "Modélisation non-linéaire de l'impact des TIC sur la productivité du travail," EconomiX Working Papers 2012-51, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    4. MIYAGAWA Tsutomu & Keun LEE & EDAMURA Kazuma & YoungGak KIM & Hosung JUNG, 2014. "Is Productivity Growth Correlated with Improvements in Management Quality? An empirical study using interview surveys in Korea and Japan," Discussion papers 14048, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    5. Marieme Chouki & Mohamed Talea & Chafik Okar & Razane Chroqui, 2020. "Barriers to Information Technology Adoption Within Small and Medium Enterprises: A Systematic Literature Review," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(01), pages 1-42, February.
    6. FUKAO Kyoji & MIYAGAWA Tsutomu, 2007. "Productivity in Japan, the US, and the Major EU Economies: Is Japan Falling Behind?," Discussion papers 07046, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    7. Keun Lee & Tsutomu Miyagawa & Shigesaburo Kabe & Junhyup Lee & Hyoungjin Kim & Young Gak Kim, 2009. "Management Practices and Firm Performance in Japanese and Korean Firms," Microeconomics Working Papers 22990, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Piva, Mariacristina & Santarelli, Enrico & Vivarelli, Marco, 2005. "The skill bias effect of technological and organisational change: Evidence and policy implications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 141-157, March.
    2. Surendra Gera & Wulong Gu, 2004. "The Effect of Organizational Innovation and Information and Communications Technology on Firm Performance," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 9, pages 37-51, Fall.
    3. Zand, Fardad & Van Beers, Cees & Van Leeuwen, George, 2011. "Information technology, organizational change and firm productivity: A panel study of complementarity effects and clustering patterns in Manufacturing and Services," MPRA Paper 46469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. MARTIN Ludivine, 2007. "The impact of technological changes on incentives and motivations to work hard," IRISS Working Paper Series 2007-15, IRISS at CEPS/INSTEAD.
    5. Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee & Michael Sorell & Feng Zhu, 2007. "Scale without mass: business process replication and industry dynamics," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    6. Hempell, Thomas, 2002. "What's Spurious, What's Real? Measuring the Productivity Impacts of ICT at the Firm-Level," ZEW Discussion Papers 02-42, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Gianfranco E. Atzeni & OA Carboni, 2006. "Regional Disparity in ICT Adoption: an Empirical Evaluation of The Effects of Subsidies in Italy," Working Paper CRENoS 200608, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    8. Gu, Wulong Gera, Surendra, 2004. "The Effect of Organizational Innovation and Information Technology on Firm Performance," The Canadian Economy in Transition 2004007e, Statistics Canada, Economic Analysis Division.
    9. Gianfranco E. Atzeni & OA Carboni, 2004. "ICT productivity and firm propensity to innovative investment: learning effect evidence from italian micro data," Working Paper CRENoS 200414, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    10. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2003. "Computing Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 793-808, November.
    11. Irene Bertschek & Ulrich Kaiser, 2004. "Productivity Effects of Organizational Change: Microeconometric Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 394-404, March.
    12. Luis Garicano & Paul Heaton, 2010. "Information Technology, Organization, and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Departments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 167-201, January.
    13. Fueki, Takuji & Kawamoto, Takuji, 2009. "Does information technology raise Japan's productivity?," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 325-336, December.
    14. Thesmar, David, 2002. "Time Based Competition and Innovation," CEPR Discussion Papers 3293, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Stefan Schweikl & Robert Obermaier, 2020. "Lessons from three decades of IT productivity research: towards a better understanding of IT-induced productivity effects," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 461-507, November.
    16. Yanhui Wu, 2015. "Organizational Structure and Product Choice in Knowledge-Intensive Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1830-1848, August.
    17. Meijers, Huub, 2007. "ICT Externalities: Evidence from cross country data," MERIT Working Papers 2007-021, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    18. Mariacristina Piva & Enrico Santarelli & Marco Vivarelli, 2006. "Technological and organizational changes as determinants of the skill bias: evidence from the Italian machinery industry," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 63-73.
    19. Kathryn Shaw, 2004. "The Human Resources Revolution: Is It a Productivity Driver?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 4, pages 69-114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Kiley, Michael T., 2001. "Computers and growth with frictions: aggregate and disaggregate evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 171-215, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:06032. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.