IDENTIFYING CONSTRUCTS RELATED TO IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE CONTEXT OF INFORMATION SHARING: A STUDY IN INDUSTRY OF ACCOUNTING SERVICES

Articles in the field of information systems recently have joined IT capabilities and top management support to information quality and organizational performance (e.g. HARTONO et al. 2010; TALLON, 2010). These studies are commonly performed in the context of trade or manufacturing, rarely involve services industry. The antecedent of testing models (relationships among constructs) includes the composition of the constructs, in terms of its observable variables. Understanding the peculiarities of the service sector - in particular the intangibility - the research aims to identify constructs related to the impacts of IT on performance using a set of measurable variables/observables applied in the context of the supply chain by Hartono et al. (2010). The methodology adopted was the survey. For processing and data analysis, were employed the analysis factorial and validity/reliability. As a result, four constructs emerged: two IT capabilities (named "IT hard capability" and "IT soft capability"); observable variables for hard IT capabilities are related to hardware resources and information used in business. For the second construct of IT capabilities (soft) there are items related to software, databases, applications etc. Two other constructs ("top management support" and "organizational performance") were validated. The support of management indicates support to the IT and to the performance. The construct of performance gathers measures in the level of processes and in the firm level. From the results, a research model is proposed as an opportunity for research in services sector.