The influence of strategic alliance networks on information and communication technology

• Autor(a) principal: Villas, Marcos Vianna
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Macedo-Soares, T. Diana L. v. A. de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/6658
• topic: strategic alliance network; information and communication technology; management.; rede de alianças estratégicas; tecnologia de informação e comunicação; gestão.

More and more firms are establishing strategic relationships with other firms in order to enhance their competitiveness. One of the main internal organizational factors used to support this strategy is information and communication technology (ICT). This article shares the main results of an empirical investigation into the perceptions of ICT managers who operate in Brazil. The investigation analyzed the influences of 13 characteristics of a strategic alliance network (SAN) on four properties of a firm’s ICT: maturity, complexity, flexibility, and alignment. Its results suggest that this influence exists and that it manifests itself in various ways, and with different degrees of strength. There is evidence that ICT maturity — degree of development orcompetence — is the property most strongly affected by the 13 SAN characteristics and that structural equivalence is the one that less influences ICT. The authors infer that, once the possible influences of a SAN have been understood, ICT managerscan anticipate these influences and better plan their firms’ ICT in order to sustain their competitiveness.