2000 Reports

Nationwide financial services: Gaining and sustaining long-term advantage through information technology

Rapp, William V.

How have U.S. and Japanese firms organized and managed the process of becoming recognized leaders in using information technology (IT) to achieve longterm sustainable advantage? The cases support an initial research hypothesis: leading U.S. and Japanese software users are very sophisticated in the ways they have integrated software into their business strategies. They use IT to institutionalize organizational strengths and to continually capture the knowledge generated by their business operations. As an introduction to the specifics of the case presented in this paper for Nationwide Financial Services, an outline of the focus of the project and the general methodology used is presented here.