Studies on IT, Logistics, and the Structure of Production

Information Technology (IT) has changed how firms and industries run their businesses and how they organize production. This thesis examines the relationships between IT and three important aspects of production organization: the usage of logistics outsourcing, the interde-dependence with upstream suppliers for intermediate inputs, and the structure of production in an economy. The first essay examines whether the advent of the Internet coincided with a move to the market in one of the most connected industries in the economy: logistics. We find that the effects of IT on outsourced logistics have changed with the advent of the Internet. The second essay examines the impact of an industry’s IT investment on its production interdependence with upstream suppliers, where we measure interdependence as direct backward linkage (DBL), and examines the relationship among DBL, total factor productivity (TFP), and value-added. We find that an industry’s IT investment reduces its production interdependence with suppliers and leads to greater value-added. The third essay explores the relationship between IT and the structure of production in an economy. We take a unique perspective, network analysis, to generate a variety of measures of the structure of production which we categorize as connectivity among industries in an ego-centric network and concentration in an ego industry’s supplying market. It is found that an industry’s IT investment is associated with an increase in the connectivity within its supplying network and a decrease in concentration in the supplying market.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Gong, Fengmei

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nault, Barrie

• Business Administration--Management

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/27915

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:11023/2048