Impact of information technology capability on financial performance during the period of economic downturn: the case of Chinese listed companies

Jinnan Wu (), Nianxin Wang and Zhining Wang
Additional contact information
Jinnan Wu: Anhui University of Technology
Nianxin Wang: Jiangsu University of Science and Technology
Zhining Wang: China University of Mining and Technology

Electronic Commerce Research, 2017, vol. 17, issue 3, No 4, 403-423

Abstract: Abstract Several earlier studies validate the positive impact of information technology (IT) capability on firm performance during economic expansion in developed countries. Given sustained IT investments and rapid adoption of various IT in developing countries (e.g. China) in the 2000s, there is a need for new research to test whether prior findings still hold true with up-to-date data from a period of economic downturn in developing countries. Thus, this study attempted to reexamine the linkage between IT capability and financial performance during recent financial crisis in 2008, especially in China context. Our results show that during the period of financial crisis, Chinese firms with superior IT capability tend to outperform a sample of control firms on average profit ratios but not on cost ratios, even after adjusting for prior performance. We also find that the profit performance effects of IT capability can be sustained over a long period of economic downturn. This study contributes to research by extending a different context (i.e. China) from developed countries with new data from economic downturn and providing new finding to reconcile prior research.

Keywords: IT capability; Economic downturn; Financial crisis; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10660-016-9248-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:elcore:v:17:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10660-016-9248-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10660

DOI: 10.1007/s10660-016-9248-1

Access Statistics for this article

Electronic Commerce Research is currently edited by James Westland

More articles in Electronic Commerce Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().