Impact of information technology on organizational effectiveness: A conceptual framework incorporating organizational flexibility

In a doctoral thesis submitted to IIT Delhi in 1994, this author had proposed a conceptual framework of the impact of information technology (IT) on organizational effectiveness. This framework hypothesized a series of impacts of IT on various organizational variables categorized as (a) process variables; (b) structural variables; (c) performance variables; and (d) effectiveness variables. A hierarchy of objectives was then developed amongst these variables using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). The emerging structure indicated a series of facilitating relationships between IT applications in the organization and various organizational variables, eventually contributing to organizational effectiveness. Amongst the process variables identified, one was “enhancing operational efficiency and flexibility”. In the hierarchy of objectives, this element had appeared as one of the direct impacts of IT. Thus, the significance of flexibility in the organization, as a variable influenced by IT applications, and in turn, influencing certain other organizational variables was highlighted. After more than a decade of this work, there have been enormous changes in the applications of IT in organizations, opening up new market opportunities, delivering improved services to customers, creating new IT-based products and streamlining internal business processes, etc. At an academic level, the concept of flexibility has taken deeper roots, with scope of flexibility also encompassing the concepts of organizational flexibility, strategic flexibility, product flexibility, manufacturing flexibility, and technology flexibility etc. The concept of systemic flexibility coupled with SAPLAP framework has also been propounded. This Paper proposes a revised conceptual framework of the impact of IT on organizational effectiveness, incorporating the dimension of organizational flexibility in the earlier conceptual framework. Empirical data from published literature on the impact of IT on organizations has also been provided, which demonstrates the validity of the revised conceptual framework.