Abstract
I nf or mat ion technol ogy i s a “hot ” topic. Consult ant , sof twar e and hardwar e compani es,the spe-cializ ed press and even some academic s pre sentITas the corn ers to ne to firm ’s perf orm ance. Th is cla imis even stro ngerin the logi st ics sect orwher e the devel opm entof the Int ernetand re-la t ed technolo gies has opened some unexpecte d possi bi li t ies.However , despi te this enthusiasm, some earl ie rwork in IT research has calle d for a more prudent vie w on IT, st at i ng thatIT does notaut omati cal ly pr ovides the fir m wit h a com pet it ive advantage.
In this paper, using both the posit io n- based and resourc e-b ased views,we develo p a framework f oranal yzing the cont ri but ion of ITin the logi sti cs sect or .We concl ude that IT wi l l cont r ibut e to competit iv e advantage in limi ted cases and that mostoft en the “stra te gic necessit y ” hypothe-sis wil lappl y.We suggest a dual approach to inf or mati on technol ogy str ategi c management : on one hand, the fir m shoul d devel op the capabi li ty to impl em enteff ici entl y som e “st andar d” so-lu ti ons on an oppor t unit y-based appr oach;on the ot her hand,itshould em bed it s IT system in th e organiz ati on wit h a stro ng top ma nagement comm it me ntand a cle arstra tegic alig nme nt.