How Financial Firms Decide on Technology

(Part Three)

2.0¡¡¡¡Previous Literature
2.1¡¡¡¡Performance of Financial Institutions

¡¡¡¡There have been a number of studies that have examined the efficiency of the banking industry and¡tthe role of various factors such as corporate control structure (type of board, directors, insider stock holdings, etc.), economies of scale (size), economies of scope (product breadth), and branching strategy; see Berger, Kashyup and Scalise (1995) and Harker and Zenios (forthcoming) for a review of the banking efficiency literature. While there is substantial debate as to the role of these various factors, there is one unambiguous result: that most of the (in) efficiency of banks is not explained by the factors that have been considered in prior work. For example, Berger and Mester (1997) estimate that as much as 65-90% of the x-inefficiency remains unexplained after controlling for known drivers of performance. A similar story also appears in insurance where "x-efficiency" varies substantially across firms when size, scope, product mix, distribution strategy and other strategic variables are considered. It has been argued that one must get "inside the black box" of the bank ot consider the role of organizational, strategic and technological factors that may be missed in studies that rely heavily on public financial data.

2.2¡¡¡¡ Information Technology and Business Value

¡¡¡¡Early studies of the relationship between IT and productivity or other measures of performance were generally unable to determine the value of IT conclusively. Loveman (1994) and Strassmann (1990) ,using different data and analytical methods both found that the performance effects of computers were not statistically significant. Barus, Kriebel and Mukadopadhyay (1995), using the same data as Loveman, found evidence that IT improved some internal performance metrics such as inventory trunover, but could not tie these benefits to improvements in bottom line productivity. Although these studies had a number of disadvantages (small samples, noisy data ) which yielded imprecise measures of IT effects, this lack of evidence combined with equally equivocal macroeconomic ananlyses by Steven Roach (1987) implicitly formed the basis for the "productivity paradox". As Robert Solow (1987) once remarked, "you can see teh computer age everywhere except in the productivity statistics."
¡¡¡¡ More recent work has found that IT investment is a substantial contributor to firm productivity, productivity growth and stock market valuation in a sample that contains a wide range of industries. Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1994,1996) and Lichtenberg (1995) found that IT investment had a positive and statistically significant contribution to firm output . Brynjolfsson and Yang (1997) found that the market valuation of IT capital was several times that of ordinary capital. Brynjolfsson and Hitt also found a strong relationship between IT and productivity growth and taht this relationship grows stronger as longer time periods are considered. Collectively ,these studies suggest that there is no productivity paradox, at least when the analysis is performed across industries using firm-level data. The differences between these results and earlier studies is probably due to the use of data taht was recent , more comprehensice ,and more disaggregated (firm level rather than industry or economy level).
¡¡¡¡Most previous sutdies have considered the effects of technology across firms in multiple industries, although a few studies have considered the role of technology in specifically in the banking industry. Steiner and Teixiera surveyed the banking industry and argued that while large investments in technology clearly had value,little of this value was being captured by the banks themselves; most of the benefits were being passed on to customers as a result of intense competition. Alpar and Kim examined the cost efficiency of banks overall and found that IT investment was associatied with greater cost efficiency although the effects were less evident when financial ratios were used as the outcome measure. Prasad and Harkere examined the relationship between technology investment and performance for 47 retail banks and found positive benefits of investments in IT staff.
¡¡¡¡ While these studies show a strong positive contribution of IT investment on average, they do not consider how this contribution (or level of investment )varies across firms. Brynjolfsson and Hitt found that "firm effects" can account for as much as half the contribution of IT found in these earlier studies. Recent results suggest that at least part of these differences can be explained by differences in organizational and strategic factors. Brynjolfsson and Hitt found that firms that use greater overall IT benefits. Bresnehan, Brynjolfsson and Hitt found a similar result for firms that have greater levels of skills and those that make greater investments in training and pre-employment screening for human capital . In addition, strategic factors also appear to affect the value of IT. Firms that invest in IT to create customer value (e.g. improve service, timeliness, convenience, variety) have greater performance than firms that invest in IT to reduce costs.
¡¡¡¡ While these studies are begining to explore how the performance of IT investment varies across firm, particularly due to organizational and strategic factors, little attention has been paid to the technology decision making process.