Financial institutions have explored various business strategies to cope with the epochal turns in business environment characterized by the so-called paradigm shift, that is, the recent trend toward open market and deregulation accompanied by changing of political and economic orders. One of the most remarkable strategies in these movements is the information technology exploitation for business reformation, which exerts deterministic power on securing competitive edge in financial institutions where a relatively high level of information intensity exists.
In this thesis we measure the levels of information infrastructure of selected financial institutions and analyze their impact on competitive power. Case study and field survey approaches are adopted for nine commercial banks including three from the matured city banks, another three from the newly-born city banks and the rest three from the local banks.
Data for the levels of information infrastructure are collected from these nine banks, which constitute the independent variables of this research. Bank business evaluation index and values added per employee are employed as the dependent variables representing competitive power of each financial institution. A meaningful relationship between information infrastructure and information index is also reviewed in the course of data analysis. A positive significant relationship was found between the level of information infrastructure and the competitive power in matured city banks and newly-born city banks. A similar relationship was turned out to be extended to local banks after controlling several mediating factors that affect their banking business. However, a significant relationship was not found between the level of information infrastructure and the information index except for the case of matured city banks.
With respect to the findings in this research it is supported that maintaining strong information infrastructure can be presented as an efficient way to gain a competitive edge and it is recommended that a wide range of institutional support for information infrastructure of financial institution is vital to secure productivity enhancement in financial industry.
