It Investment and its Productivity Effects: An Organizational Sociologist's Perspective on Directions for Future Research

The paper reviews the empirical evidence on the contribution of IT investments to economic growth and discusses the need for further research to explain the chain of causation linking the cumulative effects of IT expenditures on vertical and horizontal market structures within specific industries and the factors which influence or mediate the direction and magnitude of these effects. Two hypotheses are discussed as polar explanations for why IT capital productivity increased significantly after such a long period of stagnant and, in some industries negative, growth prior to 1987.