Vandana Mangal

Assessing the impact of information technology on labor productivity: a field study

Abstract Measuring and understanding the productivity impact of information technology (IT) is a significant and difficult problem facing researchers. We propose that the effect of IT applications can be best understood through an analysis at the information process level. We report on a field research conducted to study the impact of IT on the toll collection system of 38 interchanges at the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We focus on an information process that is relatively uncoupled from other processes in the organization to constrain the measurement problem. In addition, this process consists of well structured information processing tasks allowing us to gain a clear understanding of the economic impact of IT on different types of transactions. Our results indicate that the new IT at the turnpike had a substantial impact on the efficiency of processing complex transactions but no impact on simple transactions. These results can only be understood by examining the nature of the toll collection process and the changes generated by the new IT on some of the information processing tasks.

Direct and indirect impacts of information technology applications on productivity: a field study

Assessing the productivity impact of information technology (IT) applications is an important research problem in electronic commerce and organizational computing in general. We study the impact of a toll collection system introduced in thirty-eight interchanges of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1987. We model labor productivity both before and after the new system implementation. In addition to transaction volumes, we include productivity factors in our models to account for differences in technology, labor, and traffic patterns across the turnpike. Our results show that IT may have two types of impact. First, it can directly affect the time to process a transaction. Second, it can indirectly affect the role of a productivity factor. For example, we found that the unfavorable effect of employee turnover on labor productivity diminished with the introduction of the new system because it reduced the learning time for replacement workers.

The UCLA Anderson Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Project: A Global Study of Business Practice

Most of the large economies in the world are already dominated by services. Developed countries are now also becoming information economies; the US is a case in point. The confluence of these trends means that information services are the largest part of the US and other developed economies, with others close behind. This evolution is being accompanied by a revolution: the rapid industrialization of information services. These developments have manifold consequences for the economy as a whole, as well as for productivity, trade, jobs, globalization and competition. At the sector level, many industries are undergoing massive changes in structure. There are also significant implications for management strategies and internal organizational structure for all firms. The Business and Information Technologies (BIT) project at UCLA Anderson is a global effort to track and assess these changes through GNP studies, surveys of business practice, and studies of key industry sectors.

The business and information technologies (BIT) project : a global study of business practice

BIT (Business and Information Technologies): The UCLA Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Survey -- Year 2 (U S Karmarkar & V Mangal) The Italy Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Survey (A Mandelli et al.) The India Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Survey (A Ghosh et al.) The Korea Business and Information Technologies (BIT) Survey (H Rhim et al.) ICT as an Agent of Change in Spanish Companies: Current Situation and Future Trends (J Valor-Sabatier et al.) Related Studies: Technology Induced Change in Film/Television Distribution (J Chang et al.) Impacts of New Information and Communication Technology Adoption on Business Practices and Performances: An Exploratory Study (H Rhim et al.) The Impact of New Information Technology on the US Mortgage Industry (S Chaudhary et al.) Business Continuity and Technology in the Retail Sector (U S Karmarkar & V Mangal) Impact of Information and Communication Technology on Indian Business Sector -- Review Report (A Ghosh & A K Choudhary).

Organisational structure and value chain evolution: impacts of information technology on the insurance industry in the USA and Europe

Using interviews with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from ten insurance companies in the USA and Europe, changes to the financial services sector are studied. How the insurance industry has changed to take advantage of information technology is examined. Findings suggest that information technology is changing the insurance sector in terms of organisational forms and the structure of the industry value chain. However, the evidence shows that some organisational transformations are more complex than the ones that can be predicted by applying the frictionless paradigm. IT has also allowed some companies to operate on a global scale although the level of centralisation showed by the global groups analysed in this study is low. Comparison of the US insurance industry with their European counterparts shows that the patterns of changes are similar. However, the European firms tend to lag behind the US firms in some aspects of IT adoption and application.