【正文】 n the end, it could be said that previous research suggest that a mixed result exists when analyzing the effect of IT on business performance where some studies supported a positive relation while others suggested that panies adopting ERP did not perform financially better than nonadopting panies (Nicolaou, 2020). It can be also said that the effect of IT on business performance differs from country to country (Pilat, 2020) and should be considered when measuring business performance gains due to IT adoption. The IT Productivity Paradox Some of the research conducted before, said that IT investments had no or slight effect on 中原工學(xué)院信息商務(wù)學(xué)院外文翻譯 14 the business performance (Ross, 2020). In the time between 1980 and 1990, research findings indicated that panies which adopt IT technologies had no additional gains in productivity, and it was claimed later that IT adoption actually slows down the growth in productivity. However, lately, research indicates that IT can actually contribute to productivity improvements (Anderson et al., 2020。 Rei, 2020). This phenomenon of vanishing returns on IT investments was called the productivity paradox and can be described as Pavlou et al. (2020) stated: “previous literature has not conclusively shown that IT investments have a positive effect on either firm or process performance.” This phenomenon was named as a productivity paradox because the findings on productivity contradicted the expectations of IT investors who thought that IT investments would improve business performance (Anderson et al., 2020). Researchers have added that specific factors facilitate the positive relationship between IT and business performance like organizational change, innovation and increased employee skills (Pilat, 2020). Such factors which contribute to the phenomena of the IT paradox were also pointed out by Hamilton and Asundi (2020) and include the false measurements of output to measure productivity, measurements done before the long payoff time until when returns on IT investments accrue, economywide measurements errors due to rearrangements of output, and mismanagement. False measurements were supported by other research like Almutairi (2020) and Rei (2020). In addition, the research which was involved in the productivity paradox usually measured the effect of IT on the services sector (Pilat, 2020). IT investments in the services sector may be misleading because their IT contributes to better customerservice quality (which is their main business goals required for them from adopting IT) more often than administrative and internal efficiencies. Another issue is that in the early days of IT, the full adoption of the technology was slow with little activities towards development of employee skills to use the technology and with business process reengineering. This has been defined by (Pilat, 2020) as the process of “IT diffusion”. In addition, the studies pertaining to the productivity paradox have been measuring the IT effect on business performance too early after adoption before benefits materialized. The paradox was also attributed to management strategies that prohibit the efficient usage of IT technologies, and is currently heavily refuted and found to be incorrect (Pilat, 2020). Application: ERP and Business Performance Benefits 中原工學(xué)院信息商務(wù)學(xué)院外文翻譯 15 This section will discuss the relation between ERP systems as a specific example of IT with business performance and productivity. ERP was found to save costs (Huang et al., 2020。 Loh et al., 2020。 Goodhue, 2020), and provide better information management (Federici, 2020). Operational aspects like lead time can also be shortened by utilizing ERP systems (Cotteleer amp。 Gupta et al., 2020。 et al. (2020) suggest that servicessector business (like banks) adopting ERP usually anticipate and utilize ERP systems for effectiveness more monly than efficiency, therefore cost reductions and productivity might not be as important for them as better quality business processes and better information quality. For such ERP adopters making efficiency and productivity measurements is inaccurate and can have negative causality. Therefore, previous research has found contradicting findings regarding the effect of ERP systems on business performance. While some researchers have found that ERP systems can affect overall business performance positively, others have only found ERP systems to affect specific areas and not the overall business performance. This can then suggest that ERP systems do not always affect business performance positively and some contributing factors affect this relationship (Kang et al., 2020). In addition, some studies also contradict that sufficient financial benefits are achieved after ERP implementation. This can be seen for example when Kennerley and Neely (2020) concluded that return on sales in specific was found unaffected after implementing ERP systems. The study by Wieder et al. (2020) also stated that some research found that specific financial benefits of ERP systems were not accumulated when paring between ERP users and nonERP users. Nicolaou (2020) stated that the ration of Gamp。 Wei, 2020). This was agreed upon by Gattiker and Goodhue (2020) and Matolcsy et al. (2020) when they said that benefits start to appear after the “shakedown” phase taking duration of 2 years or more. Similarly for H228。 Bendoly, 2020). Generally and as a result of the possible delays of ERP benefits after implementation during the “shakedown phase”, it is remended not to measure business performance during this period heavily quoted by literature. The reason for this is that it would be inaccurate to measure productivity and impact as the business wouldn’t have stabilized yet (H228。 Hilmola, 2020). This was actually done by researches like Matolcsy et al. (2020) when they made their