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Can we really attribute enhancement in productivity to the introduction of Information Technology in the firms?  IT certainly has altered the way we do our work but only some of these changes can be expected to enhance productivity.

Does the implementation of Information Technology affect organizational practices, or do organizational practices drive the implementation of IT?  Effective implementation of IT requires a minimum set of organizational practices that will allow organizations to take full advantage of the stated technology benefits.

This study was intended to support the future technology implementation efforts of small to medium-sized manufacturing companies by performing a field study of 120 firms in the Greater Philadelphia region (Delaware Valley and Lehigh Valley), and by focusing on a given technology, computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM).   In this study we not only confirmed some of the findings of early work, but we also empirically assessed the role of firm-level factors in the successful implementation of technology in small to medium-sized firms, and examine some plausible alternatives to our theory of complementarity among these factors.
What firm-level factors are necessary for successful implementation of technology in small to medium-sized firms?  How do these factors interact in implementation?  This study of 100 firms in the Greater Philadelphia region focuses on computer-aided design/computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) to answer these questions, but many of the lessons are applicable to implementation of other technological advances.

The growing importance of IT, combined with the increasing investment in these technologies in organizations, makes implementation a high priority research topic.  This study found that while IT implementation has become a topic of interest over the past two decades, most previous studies have focused on studying IT implementation in general, and the focus has been on medium to large-sized organizations.