A Productivity Support or Meta‐view of IT Investment: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

Abstract

The decline in US productivity growth is now well recognized. What is not so obvious is that this is at a time when expenditures for information technology (IT) have grown at a faster rate than ever before. Shows that for the period 1980‐89, labour productivity grew at an annual rate of 1.29 per cent while capital productivity declined at a rate of ‐0.12 per cent. Information technology expenditures during this period grew at 8.6 per cent with office, computing and accounting machinery growing even faster at 10.22 per cent. Over $867 billion has been spent on IT equipment alone. Looks at the evolution of technology expenditures and productivity growth in the US economy. Argues that it is important for the information systems community to reconsider some of its dominant design paradigms – specifically, that IT investment needs to be evaluated from the standpoint of its capacity to boost productivity.

Citation

Thachenkary, C.S. (1993), "A Productivity Support or Meta‐view of IT Investment: The Need for a Paradigm Shift", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 93 No. 4, pp. 20-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579310037603