IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v15y2025i2p21582440251342085.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Innovation Mediate the Relationship Between ICT Use and Competitive Advantage? Investigating the Perceptions of Practitioners in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Minghui Yang
  • Jiawen Wang
  • Petra Maresova

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine whether ICT and innovation resources can be utilized to facilitate the competitiveness of both pharmaceutical firms and contract research organizations (CROs). By using structural equation modelling based on survey data collected from 683 pharmaceutical practitioners in China, we find that there is a positive relationship between ICT and competitive advantage. Innovation mediates the documented relationship. When comparing hypothesized relationship across different respondents, CROs’ respondents exhibit a full-mediation effect of innovation, while pharmaceutical firms’ respondents present a partial-mediation effect. Our study sheds new light on the “ICT use – competitive advantage†nexus from the innovation perspective, and offers valuable insights for managers and policymakers in better leveraging ICT and innovative resources to achieve competitive advantage.

Suggested Citation

  • Minghui Yang & Jiawen Wang & Petra Maresova, 2025. "Does Innovation Mediate the Relationship Between ICT Use and Competitive Advantage? Investigating the Perceptions of Practitioners in the Pharmaceutical Industry," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(2), pages 21582440251, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:21582440251342085
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440251342085
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440251342085
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440251342085?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:21582440251342085. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.