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Industry-specific effects of IT systems: uncovering the winners and losers
This study investigates the industry-specific effects of IT system adoption on company productivity, emphasizing how different industry conditions shape IT-driven performance. Using hierarchical linear modeling on a dataset of 1,500 companies from 12 industries over the period 2008–2021, we analyze the impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Management (BPM) systems. Our findings confirm that both ERP and BPM systems generally enhance productivity, but their effectiveness varies across industries depending on the interplay of dynamism, complexity, and munificence. By decomposing the overall performance effects into industry-specific outcomes, we reveal substantial heterogeneity, with some industries capturing greater IT benefits than others. These results underscore the importance of industry context in digital transformation and provide new insights into how firms can align IT investments with their competitive environments to maximize performance gains.