The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization

• Autores: Bloom Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen
• Localización: Management science: journal of the Institute for operations research and the management sciences, ISSN 0025-1909, Vol. 60, Nº. 12, 2014, págs. 2859-2885
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 3 Citas
• Resumen

  • Guided by theories of �management by exception,� we study the impact of information and communication technology on worker and plant manager autonomy and span of control. The theory suggests that information technology is a decentralizing force, whereas communication technology is a centralizing force. Using a new data set of American and European manufacturing firms, we find indeed that better information technologies (enterprise resource planning (ERP) for plant managers and computer-assisted design/computer-assisted manufacturing for production workers) are associated with more autonomy and a wider span of control, whereas technologies that improve communication (like data intranets) decrease autonomy for workers and plant managers. Using instrumental variables (distance from ERP�s place of origin and heterogeneous telecommunication costs arising from regulation) strengthens our results.