Corporate Investment and Information Technologies: The Case of the Greek Refining Industry

The need to improve competitiveness and the enforcement of stringent environmental regulations created the need for the technological modernization of the Greek oil refining industry. The emphasis in this paper is on the pattern of investment decisions, the linkages between the acquisition of production processes and supporting IT applications and on the influence exercised by new technological investment projects on the availability of endogenous resources required to facilitate the adoption of technical change at the firm level. The Greek experience suggests that the role of IT application is becoming increasingly important in large-scale investment projects. The successful implementation of these projects depends, to a large extent, on the learning processes and the accumulation of knowledge at the firm level. These learning processes are directly linked to the specific requirements of the production process and our evidence support that there is a lack of positive feedback between administrative applications and the successful introduction of new manufacturing technologies.