The purpose of this study is to investigate how organizational reforms and human resource management affect the effective introduction of information technology, conducting multiple comparisons based on the nation-wide survey data from 3141 firms. This analysis reveals two observations. First, reforms in organizational structures and human resource management significantly affect the successful use of information technology. Second, smaller firms have some difficulties on business process reengineering and training of their employees for the effective use of the technology. Therefore, it can be concluded that smaller firms need comprehensive business consulting support for their investment in information technology.

The role of IT (information technology) in enterprise is progressively growing as IT evolves and as global competition intensifies. Additionally, IT has come to be used for a variety of purposes. However, few enterprises appropriately manage the alignment of company strategy and IT to achieve high performance. In this study, the ways in which IT contributes to company performance was analyzed based on the results of surveys of CEOs and CIOs managing Japanese companies. The results showed that by reducing costs and improving processing speed and quality, IT can be a means of enhancing customer value and financial performance.

Moreover, the organizational capabilities and management requirements for linking IT investment with corporate performance were examined. Finally, the importance of implementing both a PDCA cycle in IT management and a top down style strategy-deployment are suggested.

Empirical studies in the literature of IT and business value indicate that IT increases productivity, but the underlying mechanism that leads to higher productivity is unclear. Motivated by various models in the literature of supply chain management that stress the benefits of information sharing to upstream manufacturing firms in a supply chain due to a reduction in inventory levels, this paper tests whether a reduction in inventory levels caused by adopting supply chain management (SCM) systems increases productivity by increasing operational efficiency, in order to reveal the mechanism of the productivity effect of SCM systems. Using a panel data set of manufacturing firms, our results indicate that firms that adopt SCM systems do indeed reduce inventory levels which lead to higher productivity, and that these effects are pronounced in firms that have a high sales variance.

Many researchers have discussed about RIO for IT investment decision and performance evaluation. Certainly ROI is useful information for investment decision, enabling IT project payoff. Today, as a variety of IT investments are usually decided and realized, maximizing the company-wide payoff is more critical rather than individual project payoff. Therefore, the center of IT management has been shifted to establish the effective management processes.

In our research, exploring the status of IT investment management processes in Japanese companies, we would consider the process model and typology of IT investment processes. Furthermore, we would suggest some implications about the relationship between the maturity and how to decide and verify of IT investment based on our analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the effects of information technology (IT) investments are recognized. Hence we consider the characteristics of investments in IT assets, and those of the organization where these investments were made. Using an original questionnaire, we conducted a survey of Japanese small medium enterprises which were all selected from the “100 Best IT Management Companies” (IT Keiei Hyakusen). The findings show that, (1) the effects of strategic IT systems and information sharing IT systems are more easily recognized than those of basic IT systems, (2) organizational characteristics affect financial, customer, and employee-related factors but not operational ones, and companies with a balanced organizational IQ recognize without difficulty the effects of IT investments, (3) agile organizational characteristics may assist in recognizing the effects of basic IT systems, and (4) the firms who recognized the least the effects of IT investments tend to decrease investment in basic IT systems.

This paper proposes a framework for qualitative evaluation of information systems in terms of organizational learning. An organization needs Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) to accelerate its ability of organizational learning for getting sustainable competitive advantages. However, we can find many cases in which introducing KMS failed in improving the ability of organizational learning. Previous researches suggest that qualitative evaluation of information systems in terms of organizational learning requires to make clear the relationships between organizational learning supports and information system functions. This paper tries to explore their relationships, and classifies 50 KMS cases, using a multivariate analysis, and formulates an ideal KMS model focusing on sales organizations. Then, each function consisting of the ideal KMS model is specified to clarify how the information system functions support organizational learning. Finally this paper shows our proposed qualitative evaluation framework in terms of organizational learning.