Our main independent variables were three dichotomous items
(IND_ST, PRO_ST and XML_ST) assessing whether the firm uses
industry-specific standards, proprietary standards and XML-based
standards respectively in order to exchange data with its
customers and suppliers. As mentioned in Section 1 they
correspond to the three main types of IS interoperability standards
used today, so it is interesting to examine and compare their
impacts on the contribution of ICT to above four important
perspectives/dimensions of business performance