If IT per se does not provide distinctive advantages, however firms can use them to leverage
or exploit firm specific, intangible resources such as organizational leadership, culture, and
business processes (Clemons and Row, 1991; Henderson and Venkataraman, 1993). Walton
(1989) and Benjamin and Levinson (1993) classified resources as organizational, business,
and technological, and argued that IT performance depends on the integration of resources
across these categories. Powell (1997) shows how human and business resources combine
with IT to produce competitive advantage through resource complementarity in retailing.
In short, the resource-based view states that (1) IT does not provide a competitive advantage
per se but is rather a strategic necessity and (2) IT has to be embedded with other resources,
typically human and business resources