Research On The Integrated Model Of Enterprises' Getting Competitive Advantage Based On IT Capability

In recent years, manufacturing market environment has deeply changed:product life cycle is becoming shorter and shorter; customer needs are becoming individual, etc. Under this situation, manufacturing enterprises urgently need to improve their IT application level, and then provide customers with higher quality products that can meet their individual needs at lower costs and faster speed. However, dispite being known as the factory of the world, there is a big gap and many problems in the IT application level between the manufacturing enterprises in Pearl River delta (PRD) and the ones in the developed countries. Therefore, how to improve the manufacturing enterprise IT application level has become an issue that needs to be solved immediately. At the same time, after the discussion about IT "productivity paradox", an increasing number of schoolars started to realize that which can help the enterprises to gain competitive advantage is IT application level or IT capability, but not IT itself. And a series of research has confirmed that view, but there lacked system and comprehensive research on the mechanism and path of IT capability enhancing competitive advantage. So, this paper takes "what is the mechanism and path of IT capability enhancing competitive advantage" as the main research problem.First, this paper exploringly took exploitive learning, exploratory learning, strategic flexibility and modular production capability as the intermediate variables of the relationship between IT capability and competitive advantage through literature research, and then established the conceptual model. Based on the direct impact relations between two variables,14 hypothesises were put forward. Then, this paper use SPSS 16.0 and LISREL8.0 to conduct regression analysis and structural equation analysis basied on the 300 questionnaires from the manufacturing enterprise in PRD. The results show that 8 hypothesis gained support and the rest do not, but there are indirect impact relations between variables in hypothesises which don't gain the support. According to the empirical results, a modification model is established. Finaly, the results of empirical analysis were discussed; the conclusions were drawn as following:the impact of IT capability advancing competitive advantage is not direct, but indirect. Therefore, if the manufacturing enterprises want to get the strategic value of IT capability to improve their competitive advantage, they need to combine IT capability with other resource to establish the comprehensive capability of organization——the learning ability throughout the organization, strategic flexibility and modular production capability. There are five indirect impact paths between IT capability and competitive advantage: path 1, IT capability influence the competitive advantage through the intermediary effect of exploitive learning, which can be descriped as "IT capabilityâ†'exploitive learningâ†'competitive advantage"; similarly, the next four paths can be repectively descriped as "IT capabilityâ†'strategic flexibilityâ†'competitive advantage"; "IT capabilityâ†'modular production capabilityâ†'strategic flexibilityâ†'competitive advantage"; "IT capabilityâ†'exploitive learningâ†'exploratory learningâ†'strategic flexibilityâ†'competitive advantage"; "IT capabilityâ†'exploitive learningâ†'exploratory learningâ†'modular production capabilityâ†'strategic flexibilityâ†'competitive advantage".This paper studies the the mechanism and path of IT capability enhancing competitive advantage systematically, and gives the explanation and the possible path based on the empirical results. And the research results will help to uncover the "black box" of the relationship between IT capability and competitive advantage. In addition, the results can provide the manufacturing enterprises in PRD with the advice about IT investment and IT application.