The Relationship between Country e-Readiness and Effectiveness of Applying Information Technology in Firms using Meta-Analysis Approach

Payoffs from information technology (IT) continue to generate interest and debate both among academicians and practitioners. These have led the decision makers to confusion about IT effect on firms` financial performance; they don’t know either high or low effect is because of internal or external factors of organizational environment. The mechanism for decreasing the risks is to identify the causes. In this paper we examine one of the intermediaries affecting the IT and firms’ financial performance relationship: country e-readiness. Meta-Analysis is an experienced approaches coping with the research context. Applying this approach we examine 380 studies (from 49 research reports) of IT effect on firm-level financial performance. Based on appropriate statistical tests, we present statistical evidence about country e-readiness as a factor that discriminates different field studies in terms of the positive or negative effect of IT on financial performance. The results indicate that countries e-readiness has a positive relation with IT payoffs in past studies.