Impact of Information Technology Capability on Financial Performance of Chinese Listed Companies during the Period of Economic Downturn

The information technology (IT) resource-based view suggests that IT capability is one of the determinants of a firm's competitive advantage and financial performance. However, we know relatively little about the relationship between IT capability and financial performance during the period of economic downturn. Even fewer research related to this is done in China as the largest emerging We used the matched sample comparison group method to collect data from 248 listed companies before and after the 2008 financial crisis during 2007-2009, and to investigate the impacts of IT capability on financial performance during economic downturn. The findings show that even during the period of financial crisis, companies with superior IT capability have better average profit ratios than a control sample of companies, but differences in the cost ratio of suggest no statistical significance between two samples.