Effects Of Boards Of Directors' External Ties On Firms' Informatization

In the information age,firms use information technology to gain competitive advantage.Given the huge investment and complexity of information technology,it is imperative for boards of directors to fully play their important role in promoting firms'informatization.Meanwhile,scholars begin to pay more attention to the involvement of board members on firms' informatization.Unfortunately,prior research has neglected the role of boards of directors' external ties on firms' informatization.Boards of directors' external ties are the primary sources of boards' ability to provide resources to the firms,accordingly,related information and knowledge and valuable resources can directly promote a firm's informatization.Drawing on the resource dependence theory,this study investigates the effects of boards of directors' external ties on firms' informatization.Boards of directors' external ties include boards of directors' political ties and boards of directors' business ties.Additionally,this study examines the moderating effect of environment in the relationship between boards of directors' external ties and firms' informatization.The environment includes institutional environment(macro level)and environmental uncertainty(micro level).Subsequently,this study conducts a literature review and presents research hypotheses.This study uses matched sample comparison group method to determine research sample and the final sample includes 576 public firms across three-time periods.Then,this paper uses objective data to measure all variables based on previous studies.Hereafter,this research uses conditional logistic regression model to test the proposed hypotheses.And this study uses two data analysis software,e.g.,STATA and SPSS.Most of proposed hypotheses have been supported after test.Specifically,boards of directors' political ties have a positive effect on firms' informatization.Also,boards of directors' business ties have positively impact on firms' informatization.In addition,institutional environment negatively moderates the relationship between boards of directors' political ties and firms' informatization.However,institutional environment cannot moderate the relationship between boards of directors' business ties and firms'informatization.Meanwhile,environmental uncertainty negatively moderates the relationship between boards of directors' political ties and firms' informatization.Also,environmental uncertainty negatively moderates the relationship between boards of directors' business ties and firms' informatization.Subsequently,this study draws research conclusions and discusses theoretical contributions and managerial implications.Finally,this study summarizes the limitations of this research and proposes future research directions for scholars.