A bottom-up path for IT management success: From infrastructure quality to competitive excellence

Can an information technology (IT) infrastructure contribute to competitive advantage and firm performance, even if this infrastructure follows IT standards and best practices, and is then neither rare nor inimitable as a resource? This study leverages the dynamic capability view and the underpinning evolutionary theories of routines, learning, and cooperation to develop a model analyzing and explaining the bottom-up path from the quality of IT infrastructure to the competitive excellence of the firm in medium-to-fast-paced business environments. This three-step causal path links the following constructs: (1) IT infrastructure quality (ITIQ); (2) business-IT partnership (BITP); (3) strategic contribution of IT (ITSC), and (4) firm's competitive excellence (CE). The study tests this model through a survey questionnaire to 212 Italian managers.