CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Information Technology is the bedrock
for national development in a rapidly changing global environment, and this
challenges us to devise bold and courageous initiatives to address a host of
vital socio-economic issues such as reliable infrastructure, skilled human
resources, and other essential issues of capacity building. In addition, many business
organizations have installed up-to date modern computers that will enable them
achieve communication and multimedia connection on the Internet (Extranet and
Intranet). As Gates (1995) put it, information Technology has already had a
huge effect on business. But its greatest impact won’t be felt until the inside
and outside a company are intimately integrated. The study here reveals that to
achieve a successful and an effective communication, organizations need to be connected
to information technology such as their
computers to the internet via the use of networks such as Local Area Networks (LANs) or Wide Area Networks (WANs), with this
network put in place, staffs can work simultaneously on the same document
either by sending or receiving emails internally, externally and from the rest
of the world.
Aig-Imoukhuede, (2003), mentioned that
to bring services closer to a customer and to guarantee the opportunity to use
them anytime a customer wants, information technology phenomenon which has been
the single most important change to business operations over the last twenty
years has to be in place.
However, paper based transactions are
now being replaced by electronic-based transactions due to the information technology
facility.
2.2
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Information Technology is a powerful force in today’s global
society. The advent of computers and Information Technology (IT) has been
perhaps the single massive drive impacting organizations during past few
decades. Information Technology or IT is revolutionizing all the living ways.
No doubt, it has given a new meaning to the word “Convenience”. Information
Technology has drastically changed the business landscapes and word “IT” has
become the “Catchword” of the modern life today. Information Technology has
become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern
industrial society. The effective use of IT is an essential element of
competing in a fast-paced, knowledge based economy. Information Technology is
the major contributor to the progress of the developed countries (Drucker,
1992; Lang,2002; Vasudevan,2003).
The developing countries like Nigeria
are increasingly deploying IT to solve their developmental problems by
investing in it from their own sources as well as by borrowing from different
institutions (Odedra & Kluzer, 1998).
2.3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Information Technology also creates a
serious dilemma for management today. IT innovations have the potential for
changing the competitive game for any organization. On the other hand, the size
of IT investments put increasing pressure on managers to assess its business
value. One key to this dilemma is to improve the ability to measure and track
the impact of IT on performance. Alongside, the seemingly inexorable rise in IT
investment during the last 20 years, there have been considerable uncertainty
and concern about the productivity and efficiency impact of IT being
experienced in organizations. However, in quest of improving efficiency and
effectiveness the companies are making heavy investments in Information
Technology. These enduring magnitudes of investment in Information Technology
so has drawn attention of many researchers, managers and policy makers to the
impacts of IT on growth and productivity. The expectation was that increased
investment in IT would naturally lead to increase performance of organization.
But despite the massive investments in IT both in the developed and developing
economies, the impact of IT on productivity and business performance continued
to be questioned (Wilcock, et. al, 1998).
Despite hundreds of studies carried
out, scholars remained deeply divided into two groups which can be identified
as “Productivity Paradox-IT has no
impacts on productivity” and “Productivity Payoff-IT does improve
productivity”.
The goal of every information
systems, based in any organization is to improve performance on the job and
this performance efficiency is only achieved when IT is accepted and used
warmly by the concern employees in organizations (Venkatesh et al., 2003).
In their quest for development, many
developing countries put great hope in use of IT. Yet, the challenges of IT
diffusion in these countries are by no means identical to the ones in the
developed countries. The challenges faced by developing countries in harnessing
the full potential of IT are not really very different from those of that
confronted by the developed countries (Khan, 2003). Information Technology now is the most
preferred choice of all developing and developed countries to upgrade their
economies and become competitive in the global market place. The IT based
economies have streamlined the most complex economies of the world and enhanced
productivity and performance. The world
economy now has moved from low-value basic industries to a fast paced
high-value information based economy.
2.4 EMPIRICAL
STUDIES
Information Technology has been
defined in various ways by different authors. Over the years, IT has been
conceptualized and measured differently by different researchers. The majority
of the authors, however, parallel Information Technology with computer systems.
Frenzel(1999) for example defines IT as “Information Technology is the term
that describes the organization’s computing and communications, infrastructure,
including computer systems, telecommunication networks, and multimedia
(combined audio, text, and video) hardware and software”. Shelly et. al(2005)
narrate that “IT includes hardware, software, databases, networks, and other
related components which are used to build information systems” Many other
researchers also have come up with the same idea and say that “IT is the
technology that supports activities involving the creations, storage,
manipulation and communication of information together with their related
methods and management applications” (Vlosky, 2002). However, William &
Sawyar, 2005 define Information Technology as a general term that describes any
technology that help to produce, manipulate, process, store, communicate,
and/or disseminate information. This definition may be regarded as the
comprehensive one, as it covers all aspects discussed by different researchers
and includes all the components and processes needed to carry out information
processing work in the organization.
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