【正文】 ce where xefficiency varies substantially across firms when size, scope, product mix, distribution strategy and other strategic variables are considered. It has been argued that one must get inside the black box of the bank ot consider the role of organizational, strategic and technological factors that may be missed in studies that rely heavily on public financial data.　　 Information Technology and Business Value　　Early studies of the relationship between IT and productivity or other measures of performance were generally unable to determine the value of IT conclusively. Loveman (1994) and Strassmann (1990) ,using different data and analytical methods both found that the performance effects of puters were not statistically significant. Barus, Kriebel and Mukadopadhyay (1995), using the same data as Loveman, found evidence that IT improved some internal performance metrics such as inventory trunover, but could not tie these benefits to improvements in bottom line productivity. Although these studies had a number of disadvantages (small samples, noisy data ) which yielded imprecise measures of IT effects, this lack of evidence bined with equally equivocal macroeconomic ananlyses by Steven Roach (1987) implicitly formed the basis for the productivity paradox. As Robert Solow (1987) once remarked, you can see teh puter age everywhere except in the productivity statistics.　　 More recent work has found that IT investment is a substantial contributor to firm productivity, productivity growth and stock market valuation in a sample that contains a wide range of industries. Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1994,1996) and Lichtenberg (1995) found that IT investment had a positive and statistically significant contribution to firm output . Brynjolfsson and Yang (1997) found that the market valuation of IT capital was several times that of ordinary capital. Brynjolfsson and Hitt also found a strong relationship between IT and productivity growth and taht this relationship grows stronger as longer time periods are considered. Collectively ,these studies suggest that there is no productivity paradox, at least when the analysis is performed across industries using firmlevel data. The differences between these results and earlier studies is probably due to the use of data taht was recent , more prehensice ,and more disaggregated (firm level rather than industry or economy level). 　　Most previous sutdies have considered the effects of technology across firms in multiple industries, although a few studies have considered the role of technology in specifically in the banking industry. Steiner and Teixiera surveyed the banking industry and argued that while large investments in technology clearly had value,little of this value was being captured by the banks themselves。 the worker is not employed by the firm, but is managed more or less as if they were an employee. This pratice is so mon in IT that the presence of contract employees is assumed to be a standard feature of IT departments. At the next level is selective outsourcing in which a firm outsources particular projects or parts of projects to an outside vendor. This is also quite mon in software development and technical support activities, although any welldefined task could presumably be outsourced in this way. Finally, the firm may choose to outsource the entire IT function, a practice that began in the late 1980s and has continued today. Hitt, Lorin M., Frei, Frances X. and Patrick T. Harker. (1999) How Financial Firms Decide on Technology, in Brookings/Wharton Papers on Financial Services:1999, Litan, Robert E. and Anthony M. Santomero, Eds. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 。 they argue that information systems specialists should be reponsible for evalusting new technologies for business applicability since business units will generally lack the resources or the technological capability to perform these evaluations themselves. Moreover, central IT is best positioned to educate the end uses to make them good custmers of the central IT group. 　　In the banking industry, IT may be able to play an additional role in coordinating technology. Because banks and other financial firms are often managed with largely autonomous business units (for example, banks are often divided into product lines cash management, investmentor along customer segmentswholesale, mercial, retail) only the central IT function will have a perspective over the porfolio of systems projects and capabilities. One critical role in this respect is the provision and development of the shared IT infrastructure (. central processors, networks, software standards, etc.). Often these projects naturally span business units such that the only ral owner is the IT function。 banks versus saving amp。15 / 16How Financial Firms Decide on Technology，介紹國際大銀行在決定對信息技術(shù)投資時的考慮要點和他們具體的實施過程。information systems place strong constraints on the type of products offered, the degree of customization possible and the speed at which firms can respond to petitive opportunities or threats.　　A persistent finding of research into the performance of financial institutions is that performance and efficiency varies widely across institutions, even after controlling for factors such as size(scale), product