The tools of the learning and their effect in the managerial results

Resumen

The objective of this research is to demonstrate that information technologies (ITs) are tools of organizational learning, which generate better managerial results in the future. Therefore, they help to the creation of competitive advantage. These evidences are gotten measuring the disposition and tools’ use of the organizational learning and contrasting a series of relative hypothesis to their significant influence on the economic results - net profit and sales volume - and operative; using for it the ANOVA analysis.At the moment, a shortage of remarkable researches identifies which tools facilitate the organizational learning process. Neither scales to measure their use and their effect in the managerial results has been identified. This situation justifies the first objective of this investigation: to develop a reliable and valid scale of measure that allows establishing an index to value the level of tools’ use that facilitates the organizational learning. The methodology proposed by Malhotra (1999) has been used for this purpose. Initially, the considered tools have been the intranets, Internet, databases, electronic mail, chat, groupware, simuworlds and videoconference. After the development of the methodology, an index of measure of the tools’ use that facilitates the organizational learning has been created. This index is formed by 13 items, distributed in three subindexes. The value of the index has oscillated between 0 and 10.9. The maximum could be 13. The average value is 7.5. And, the companies use 60% of the considered instruments in this study.A similar analysis has been developed for each one of the mentioned subindexes. The subindex of database’s use is the highest, and then we can conclude that these tools are broadly used for the internal management. The second in importance is the subindex relative to Internet, because it allows to contact with current and potentials clients, suppliers and sector associations; while the electronic mail is fewer used proportionally, since its use decreases when the communities are not linked with the company (potential clients mainly).Once developed the index of tools’ use and organizational learning, our second objective has been to contrast its positive effects in the results of the company (financial as operative). The developed analyses show that the organizations that use Internet get worse net profits and bigger operative results. Also, those companies that use more databases tools reach bigger sales volumes and operative results. And finally, the results exhibit that the use of the electronic mail increases the sales volume.