Of the five attributes of IT studied in this paper, application of the resource-based logic summarized in Figure 1 suggests that only IT managerial skills are likely to be a source of
sustained competitive advantage. IT management skills are often heterogeneously distributed across firms. Moreover, these skills reflect the unique histories of individual firms, are often part of the "taken for granted" routines in an organization, and can be based on socially complex relations within the IT function, between the IT function and other business functions in a firm, and between the IT function and a firm's suppliers or customers.