Resolving the productivity paradox of digitalised production

Although Industry 4.0 and other initiatives predict widespread adoption of digitalised technology on the factory floor, few companies use new digitalised production technology holistically in their ecosystems; in practical implementation, companies often decide against digitalisation for financial reasons. This is due to a paradox (akin to the so called “productivity paradox”) caused by the complexity of value creation and value delivery within digitalised production. This article analyses and synthesises cross-disciplinary research using a grounded theory model, thus offering valuable insights for businesses considering investing in digitalised production. A qualitative model and an associated toolbox (complete with tools for practical application by business leaders and decision-makers) are presented to address organisational uncertainty and leadership disconnect that often contribute to the paradoxical gap between digital strategy and operational implementation.

Analysis on the Trend and Factors of Total Factor Productivity of Agricultural Export Enterprises in China

There is an “export productivity paradox” in Chinese enterprises, which has been confirmed in agricultural enterprises. This paper attempts to explain this phenomenon from the perspective of the components of TFP. This paper uses the SFA-Malmquist method to decompose and compare the TFP of China’s agricultural export enterprises based on the data of the state-level leading agricultural enterprises from 2016 to 2017. The conclusions are as follows: firstly, China’s agricultural TFP shows a negative growth trend, and the growth rate of TFP of agricultural export enterprises is less than that of agricultural non-exported enterprises; secondly, the growth rate of TFP of grain and animal husbandry export enterprises is less than that of non-export enterprises; the growth rate of TFP of private agricultural export enterprises is lower than that of non-export enterprises of the same type; the growth rate of TFP of export enterprises in eastern and western regions is lower than that of non-export enterprises; and thirdly, technical progress is an important reason for the change of TFP of China’s agricultural enterprises. However, compared with agricultural non-exported enterprises, improving the technical efficiency of enterprises can more promote the TFP of agricultural export enterprises.

The Usefulness of the Two-Step Normality Transformation in Retesting Existing Theories

The Two-Step normality transformation has been shown to reliably transform continuous variables toward normality. The procedure offers researchers a capable alternative to more prominent methods, such as winsorization, ranking, and power transformations. We demonstrate its utility in the context of the Productivity Paradox literature stream, which is renowned for inconsistent results. This paper demonstrates that the Two-Step normality transformation, which has not been used in Productivity Paradox research, may produce greater goodness-of-fit and affect theoretical understandings on the topic. We use a classic Productivity Paradox dataset to show that compared to the prominent normality transformations, the Two-Step produces unique findings, including 1) regression coefficients more closely resembling the original data, 2) different effect sizes and significance levels, and 3) strengthening evidence for fundamental theories in Productivity Paradox literature. We demonstrate results that challenge uncertainties about the relationship between IT investment and firm performance. Our results imply that the Two-Step procedure should be considered a viable transformation option in future information systems research.

Economic Implications of Digital Transformation

In a firm perspective the simply availability of digital systems does not necessarily lead to success. On the contrary, it requires that firms accompany digital resources with the development of best organizational practices which implicates a transformation in term of e.g. organizational changes and innovation. Digital technologies allow companies to improve productivity in two ways: by making hard improvements that dramatically increase the efficiency of intelligent machine and processes, and by making soft improvements that increase the efficiency of people working together. The paper highlights various discussions on the relationship between ICT investment and productivity. However, this framework has outlined a relatively more cohesive body of thought which, by seeking to overcome the controversial concept of the productivity paradox, highlights the existence of a significant relationship, not just between ICT and productivity, but also between certain multiplying variables which represent ICT and other complementary factors.