The impact of Information and Communication Technologies on operating processes: evidence from a survey

This paper aims at testing whether and how the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can lead to value creation. The analysis builds on previous studies according to which ICTs can determine favourable economic outcomes because they lead to sound improvements at the operating process level and to a superior product offering. In this paper we wanted to check whether such value creation mechanism can be further boosted when companies embed the superior operating performance gained through the adoption of ICTs into a more valuable product offering. The paper presents the evidence of a survey conducted in Italy, which led to collect 109 usable questionnaires. Data have been analysed through the Structural Equation Modeling technique. Empiri-cal evidence shows that ICTs can lead to value creation mainly because they de-termine a better process’ responsiveness and that, when such responsiveness is embedded into a superior product offering, value creation is further boosted.