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The purpose of this paper is to understand whether or not factors that impact the performance–innovation nexus differ from one percentage level of performance to another among small- and medium-sized enterprises in regional Australia, with a specific focus on e-innovation by strategic and non-strategic firms in the agricultural sector and in other industries.

Researchers implicitly assumed that the performance–innovation relationship is uniform across high-level, mid-level and low-level performing small- and medium-sized enterprises. In this study, the authors analysed performance at different percentage levels.

The findings indicate that the levels of small- and medium-sized enterprises performance have a significant difference in terms of the factors influencing their performance. The industry may be a determinant of performance, which is similar in the case of the topmost performers in the non-agricultural sector. The major findings of this study are as follows: the performance–innovation relationship differs by the percentage level of small- and medium-sized enterprises performance; and Solow’s productivity paradox exists at the firm level.

The authors recommend that rural policies should target low-performing firms. Moreover, researchers should adopt methodologies that shed light on the differences in the performance–innovation nexus across performance levels rather than one-size-fits-all methodologies that are often adopted.

The major contributions of this study are that the performance–innovation relationship differs by the level of small- and medium-sized enterprises performance, and Solow’s productivity paradox exists at the firm level.

Information Technology has transformed the banking sector with respect to various systems and processes. Banks have adopted various measures to quicken their business activity and also save cost and time. That is why there has been large requirement of IT in the banking sector. The question arises whether this investment is enhancing the profitability of the bank or not. The purpose of this paper is to examine the presence of profitability paradox in Indian Banking Sector.

Data are collected from ten nationalized banks and three private sector banks from 2006 to 2013. The impact of IT expenditure on return on assets and profit efficiency is examined. Profit efficiency is determined using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. Data are collected from annual reports of the banks. Data on IT expenditure are collected through Right to Information Act 2005. Correlation and Panel Regression are used to investigate the relationship between IT expenditure and ROE or Profit Efficiency.

The findings of the paper confirm the presence of profitability paradox in the Indian Banking sector.

Extension of this study to other developing countries of the world will help to identify if any common pattern is there among the developing countries as far as productivity or profitability paradox is concerned.

There are some studies on the impact of IT on the banking sector in USA and Europe. This type of study however is rare in the context of India or for that matter other developing countries. Therefore, this paper will add new dimension to the existing literature and pave the way for future research in this area.

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s overall productivity rates did not reflect the rising investment in information and computer technology (ICT). This paradox, the productivity paradox, which was widely discussed among economists may well turn out to be mainly a mirage once the assumption is excluded that investment has a short‐run effect on productivity. The apparent productivity paradox seems to be rooted in an ICT infrastructure that is inadequate and in an increase in income disparities that thwart the realization of economies of scale.

The relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and productivity has been widely discussed in the past two decades, but little understood. Since the early 1970s productivity growth in almost all of the world economies has slowed, while expenditure on ICT has risen. This raises the so‐called “productivity paradox” with some economists concluding that there is no relationship between spending on ICT and productivity. The study examines this relationship with time series tools in an attempt to identify whether there is a causal relationship in either direction, or whether there is a third factor affecting both ICT growth and productivity growth. Using the Granger causality procedure applied to Portuguese data from the period 1980‐2000, the paper attempts to understand better the paradox in order to recommend to managers how they might make better‐informed and more effective decisions about ICT investments.

This paper aims to examine whether chief executive officer’s (CEO) information technology (IT) background can affect enterprises’ continuous green innovation (CGI).

This study uses the data of China’s listed enterprises from 2011 to 2019.

The statistical results reveal that when a company hires a CEO with an IT background, its CGI can be higher. Firm ownership, firm digitization and industry bias alter the impact of CEO’s IT background on firms’ CGI. This effect is most pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), high-digitalized enterprises and skill-biased industries, while not in SOEs, low-digitalized enterprises and labor-biased industries.

This study has practical implications, as it measures CGI of enterprises. It also points to the necessity for a CEO’s IT background to enhance CGI.

The findings provide new strategies for incentivizing sustainable development and green innovation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to discuss the association between CEO’s IT background and enterprises’ CGI. The conclusions enrich both upper echelons theory and enterprise green innovation literature.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

Prior IT productivity research usually assumes constant returns on IT investment. This study suggests that the impact of IT investment on productivity may not be constant but may change with the IT investment scale and over time. Specifically, we divide IT investment into commercial IT and in-house IT and investigate their changing impacts on industry labor productivity.

A model of the productivity impacts of commercial IT and in-house IT with changing effects of scale and over time is developed and empirically tested based on industry-level panel data from the US. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

The returns on commercial IT investment increase with scale but decrease over time, while the returns on in-house IT increase over time.

This study provides a new perspective for IT productivity research by investigating the changing productivity impacts of IT investment. It also suggests that commercial IT and in-house IT should be distinguished, as they have different impacts on productivity.

The purpose of this study is to explore and evaluate potential nonmonotonicity in the determinants of profit efficiency, specifically IT and R&D investments in the Indian commercial banking sector.

The study employs an alternative stochastic profit efficiency framework and introduces nonmonotonic effects by parameterizing the location and scale parameters of the inefficiency component on an unbalanced panel data set of 72 commercial banks in the 2008–2019 period. Marginal effects across quartiles are calculated using a bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap procedure of 500 simulations. The study disaggregates across ownership and size for gauging the impact of structure on the associations between determinants of profit efficiency.

The study partially rejects the productivity paradox as it discovers a negative association of IT and R&D with profit inefficiency. However, the observed nonmonotonicity of IT is of significance for bank managers, as the study concludes that overinvestment in IT is detrimental to a bank’s profit-maximizing interests. Further, bank size, loan default and credit risk depict a nonmonotonic relationship across the sample with large banks, high NPAs and high credit risk associated with reducing profit efficiency. In addition, higher margins and greater diversification are related positively to efficiency, and banks with cost-heavy structures or having high liquidity risk associated negatively with efficiency.

To the best knowledge of the authors, the study is perhaps the first to acknowledge and incorporate nonmonotonic associations of IT investments amidst other exogenous determinants under a stochastic profit efficiency framework.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an engineering perspective on the modern productivity paradox. Specifically, to shed new light on the failure of information and communication technology (ICT) to increase overall factor productivity.

To this end, alternative approaches to modeling material processes are presented and discussed. Empirical evidence is brought to bear on the question of ICT productivity. Finally, the implication of the findings for production and management technology are presented and discussed.

The principal finding is theoretical in nature, namely that, according to classical mechanics and applied physics, ICT is not physically productive. Rather, information is an organizational input.

By identifying the role of ICT in material processes, the paper provides a framework to better understand and evaluate ICT investment, both at the firm and industry level. While ICT does not contribute to increasing physical output, it does nonetheless increase profitability. On a broader level, the paper provides a framework to evaluate ICT‐related public policy measures.

Among the contributions of the paper are the use of basic engineering principles to shed light on the modern productivity paradox; and the conclusion that information, unlike energy, is not physically productive and as such cannot be counted upon to increase output.

The purpose of this paper is to present the argument that there exists a threshold limitation to new knowledge creation, associated with a global productivity growth slowdown, a global decline in research and development (R&D) productivity and a decline in the growth of globalisation.

Taking the form of a conceptual paper, this paper seeks to advance the polemic that despite discussions of a ‘fourth industrial revolution,’ there has been no substantive change in a global decline in productivity growth, particularly in developed countries. Specific threats are identified and related to the consequences of technological proliferation in the absence of an effective research response to address them. Certain theoretical propositions are derived, with the suggestion that novel theory promises a ‘fifth industrial revolution,’ one that might ultimately reverse the downward trend in global productivity growth.

Drawing on management theory, derivation of the theoretical propositions suggests the existence of a mechanism related to research productivity enhancement. Discussions suggest that this mechanism might ultimately explain how the R&D productivity decline, evident since the 1970s, may ultimately be reversed.

The paper seeks to provoke novel thinking about the consequences of a failure to develop a research agenda explicitly focused on the attainment of economies of scale in the research process itself.