【正文】 ding of research into the performance of financial institutions is that performance and efficiency vary widely across institutions. Nowhere is this variability more visible than in the outes of the IT investment decisions in these institutions. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of IT investment decision processes in the banking industry. The purpose of this investigation is to uncover what, if anything, can be learned from the IT investment practices of banks that would help in understanding the cause of this variability in performance along with pointing toward management practices that lead to better investment decisions. Using PC banking and the development of corporate Internet sites as the case studies for this investigation, the paper reports on detailed fieldbased surveys of investment practices in several leading institutionsHow Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part One) 信息技術(shù)對(duì)金融服務(wù)業(yè)的影響正在增加，不僅僅表現(xiàn)在銀行的15%無(wú)息開支上，而且對(duì)金融服務(wù)業(yè)的運(yùn)做和戰(zhàn)略也有很強(qiáng)的影響。How Financial Firms Decide on Technology，介紹國(guó)際大銀行在決定對(duì)信息技術(shù)投資時(shí)的考慮要點(diǎn)和他們具體的實(shí)施過(guò)程。How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Abstract) The financial services industry is the major investor in information technology(IT) in the . economy。 　　　　一個(gè)對(duì)金融機(jī)構(gòu)的長(zhǎng)期研究表明，不同的機(jī)構(gòu)的效率和表現(xiàn)也不同。SBS是一個(gè)失敗的例子，但是成功的公司也不少。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 breadth(scope), branching behavior and organizational form(. stock versus mutual for insurers。 loans). Given the central role that technology plays in these institutions, at least some of this variation is likely to be due to variations in the use and effectiveness of IT investments. While some authors have argued that the value of IT investment has been insignificant, particularly in services, recent empirical work has suggested that IT investment, on average, is a productive investment. Perhaps more importantly, there appears to be substantial variation across firms。 Young39。 in particular, PC banking is a fairly well defined product innovation, while the corporate web presence is more of an infrastructure investment which is less welldefined in terms of objectives and business ownership.　　Overall, we find that while some aspects of the decision process are fairly similar across institutions and often conform to best practice as defined by previous literature, there are several areas where there is large variation in practice among the banks and between actual and theoretical best practice. Most banks have a strong and standardized project management for ongoing systems projects, and formal structures for insuring that linemanagers and systems people are in contact at the initiation of technology projects. At the same time, many banks have relatively weak processes(both formal and informal) for identifying new IT investment opportunities, allocating resources across organizational lines, and funding exploratory or infrastructure projects with long term or uncertain payoffs.　　The reminder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the previous literature on performance of financial institutions and the effects of IT on performance. Section 3 describes the methods and data. Section 4 describes the current academic thinking on various ponents of the decision process and pares that to actual practices at the banks we visited. Section 5 describes the results of our indepth study of PC banking projects and the summary, Section 6 contains a similar analysis for the Corporate Web Site and discussion and conclusion appear in Section 7. How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part Three) 　　Previous Literature　　Performance of Financial Institutions　　There have been a number of studies that have examined the efficiency of the banking industry andthe role of various factors such as corporate control structure (type of board, directors, insider stock holdings, etc.), economies of scale (size), economies of scope (product breadth), and branching strategy。 most of the benefits were being passed on to customers as a result of intense petition. Alpar and Kim examined the cost efficiency of banks overall and found that IT investment was associatied with greater cost efficiency although the effects were less evident when financial ratios were used as the oute measure. Prasad and Harkere examined the relationship between technology investment and performance for 47 retail banks and found positive benefits of investments in IT staff.　　 While these studies show a strong positive contribution of IT investment on average, they do not consider how this contribution (or level of investment )varies across firms. Brynjolfsson and Hitt found that firm effects can account for as much as half the contribution of IT found in these earlier studies. Recent results suggest that at least part of these differences can be explained by differences in organizational and strategic factors. Brynjolfsson and Hitt found that firms that use greater overall IT be