Utilisation des TIC et capacités concurrentielles : proposition d'un modèle de recherche empirique

The issue of the links or underlying mechanisms between IT (Information technology) and the firm performance remains unclear. Empirical research has obtained mitigated results.The Resource-based View seems more particularly adapted for explaining the heterogeneity of firm results.Powell and Dent-Micaleff (1977) have shown that IT alone have not produced sustained competitive advantage in the american retail distribution industry, but that some firms have won this type of advantage by using IT for leveraging human and business complementary intangible resources. Thus our research question consists in knowing if IT, as- sociated with human, organizational and business complementary resources, contribute to create differences in competitive capacities among firms. And if yes, how, by what particular combinations of complementary resources ?The proposed model is inspired at its starting point by Powell and Dent-Micaleff's one, but changes it in some important points : capacities rather than resources, net-works taken into account, IT actualisation, reasoning in terms of use and combinations of resources, IS (Information System) rather than IT orientation, differenciation between human and organizational resources.A new list and categorization of the variables are equally proposed. A quantitative methodology is proposed to measure these phenomenas.This new model, we hope, should allow a better comprehension of the underlying mechanisms explaining how IT and IS can influence differences of competitive capacities between firms.