MIS782 - Nettavisen Case Study: IT, RBV and Competitive Advantage

This report discusses the role of information technology in business, using Nettavisen as a case study. It analyzes Nettavisen's competitive advantages over legacy news publishers and new media players like Facebook and Google in the Norwegian market. The report also combines the concepts of Resource Based View (RBV) and IT portfolio theory to assess Nettavisen's competitive edge in a turbulent market, highlighting how the company's data-driven business model and strategic IT investments contribute to its success. The report concludes that strategic IT implementation can significantly enhance a firm's competitiveness and overall business performance.

Running head: VALUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS
Value of Information Technology in Business
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1VALUE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS
Abstract
The report is prepared to discuss about the importance of information technology in business
firms and based on it the chosen case study of Nettvisen business firm is reflected and
analyzed. The different business strategies that are taken by the Nettvisen online news
website is hence discussed and how it achieved its competitiveness in the external market
field in spite of many challenges is thus mentioned in the last part of the report.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................4
Competitive advantage of Nettavisen over Legacy news publishers:....................................4
Competitive advantages of Nettavisen over new media players such as Facebook and
Google:...................................................................................................................................4
Task 2.........................................................................................................................................5
Resource based view of the firm:...........................................................................................5
IT portfolio of the firm:..........................................................................................................6
How Nettavisen used the RBV theory and IT portfolio theory to gain advantages:..............7
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................7
References:.................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction:
Today’s world is entirely dependent on information technology. Information can be
defined as the processed data or the raw information that are given to our computer. It can be
of any form be it in text form or voice form or image form. Information technology are the
systems of hardware and software that helps in capturing process, exchanging stores and
presenting information using electrical magnetic energy (Cui et al. 2015). Todays business
world totally depends on the information technology in order to carry out their daily business
process. Business world has to face different challenges with respect to global competition
and technological changes. From various studies it is seen that small business can increase
their business value by boosting their valuation to more than 25% (Wu, Straub and Liang
2015). This is done when the owners of the business strengthened their way to fix operational
features with the help of information technology. Implementing information technology in
business can help the business owners to gain higher price while raising funds. Especially
business organizations that deals with publishing newspapers via online method gets
fascinated with the implementation of information technology in their business process. This
would help them in gaining high business value by delivering information electronically
without using the printing paper. Several organisations got hooked up with the use of
information technology in delivering information and simultaneously attracting peoples to the
online websites that provide news of all kinds. Many companies tried building up CD-ROM
in order to deliver information regarding various news by using the satellite and N11
services. Thus, as the world progresses with the application of information technology in the
field of journalism, gradually there evolved the new era of internet journalism creating a
relation between the journalists and the technical methods that are used in the online media
industry. Technology effects the business operations of all kinds irrespective of size
benefiting the business to gain competition, gaining profit and producing results that satisfies

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the customers. This helps in building an efficient culture and relationship of a business. A
business organization of nay field can do their researches on the upcoming opportunities with
the help of technological capacity which is very much essential for a business. Information
technology implementation in business operations allows the enterprise to travel into the new
market opportunities and identify the challenges in the market position virtually without any
external cost or the risk to create a branch of the business abroad.
Discussion
Task 1: What are the main competitive advantages that Nettavisen holds over legacy-
news publishers and new media players such as Facebook and Google in the Norwegian
market?
Competitive advantage of Nettavisen over Legacy news publishers:
Over the past few years Nettavisen is gradually gaining advantages by increasing its
share in the market and gaining profit through the use of disruptive business models (Barney
2012). As a result, this business model helps the Nettavisen to compete against the legacy
new publishers (Nærland 2015). Though the legacy news publishers felt that they can
experiment with digital platforms within their brand but this was proved completely wrong
by Neettavisen when a new leading online news site was established by them within a few
years. The business firm of Nettavisenn gets its currency from different publicists for
presenting their ads on their websites.
Competitive advantages of Nettavisen over new media players such as Facebook
and Google:
From the beginning of the business strategy, the main goal of Netttavisen is to gain
competitive advantages over the legacy news publishers and new media players such as
Facebook and Google over the Norwegian market (Thorbjørnsen 2018). This type of

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sophisticated online companies is mostly ahead from realizing the importance of strategic
value of data in a business model. Netttavisen gained competitive advantages over the online
media by aiming in preventing data seepage from the marketplace of Norway and
simultaneously leveraging its own information sets with the help of combined big data sets in
order to drive the focus and embedded analytics (Jacobsen 2018). This in turn improved the
decision-making ability of the editorials and helped in advertising the revenues. The firm of
Nettavisen pursues a clear strategy to attract more and more people to its website. This is
where the firm holds the main competitive advantage from rest of the established newspapers.
Adding to its advantages Nettavisen has the freedom to publish its news at any time whereas
the other news paper publishing houses needs to think about it before publishing any news to
keep it for the next days publishing. Nettavisenn had no legacy related to journalism that
needs to be protected. Gradually Nettavisen gained a huge market share over three top most
online news site in Norway. By the year 2010 Nettavisen was recognized as the third major
online broadcast site.
Task 2: How can you combine the concepts and principles of Resource Based View of
the firm (RBV) and IT portfolio theory to critically assess and explain Nettavisen’s
competitive advantage in a disruptive turbulent market? Support your argument with
references to existing literature in Information Systems.
In order to analyse the Nettavisen’s competitive advantages in the disruptive turbulent
market, it is necessary that the concept and principles of Resource Based View of the firm
and the IT portfolio theory should be critically assessed.
Resource based view of the firm:
Resource based view of a firm is a type of managerial framework that helps in
determining the resources based on these strategic planning which has the potential to deliver

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advantages to the firm. These resources that are used in the firm has the ability to get
exploited within the firm itself in order to gain competitive advantages (Nyberg et al. 2014).
According to Barney, firm resources consists of all the capabilities, attributes of the firm,
information and the organizational processes which are measured by the firm to allow to
consider and implement policies to improve the competence of the business (Weill and Aral
2016). In a resources-based view of a firm, the strategies are developed in such a way so that
they can exploit the internal resources relative to the external opportunities.
IT portfolio of the firm:
IT portfolio management is considered as a method to manage all the IT reserves of
an group so that the risks of the specific business investments can be evaluated in order to
regulate their contribution in business performance. According to modern IT portfolio theory,
it is not enough to concentrate only on the risk and return of a single security. It is essential to
make a diversified portfolio in order to determine the risk in terms of a investor so that the
investment is returned in a lower rate than expected. According to modern portfolio theory,
this risk is the deviation as compared to the average return (Lin and Wu 2014). The IT
portfolio model suggests the classifications of all existing, planned and potential IT
investments into four categories namely strategic, key operational, support and high potential
which helps in gaining expected contribution to business success. Strategic changes in a
business firm creates or supports changes about the conduct of the organisation with the aim
of providing competitive advantages. Only advancement of technologies in business firm
does not provide competitive advantages but the firm also needs to apply strategic assessment
based on the contribution of the business.
How Nettavisen used the RBV theory and IT portfolio theory to gain advantages:
Combining these two concepts of RBV and IT portfolio theory Nettavisen has
achieved in gaining competitive advantages in the disruptive turbulent market of Norway. For

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example, Nettavisen introduced a data determined corporate model to establish a diverse
labor force (Zaki, Lillegraven and Neely 2015). The firm is also perusing big data policies
which intended at analysing the number of users glancing their sites. The personalized
analytics that are generated is then aimed at producing a personalised content for the online
news sites (Houston et al. 2015). The new blogging community that is introduced in the
portfolio of the organisation has brought in various challenges in the organisation (Lundvall
2016). As the bloggers have their personal agendas, they will not ever be socialised in the
Nettavisen’s measures. Though this challenge has emerged within the organisation but it can
be seen as a blessing as it explores the places where the challenges may take place in the
existing market.
Conclusion:
The from the report it can be concluded that the market of online news media is
totally dominated by the media legacy of different organisations which has implemented
integrated systems in their online based operations. This has made possible to the
organisations to influence their existing capitals especially the well-known varieties like
Nettavisen to generate revenue and draw as many audiences to its online websites. The Data
driven business model established by Nettavisen suggests the shifting of the data driven
economy that helps in capturing more audience by creativity and innovation. Due to its
strategic model in business environment, Nettavisen has achieved in competing with other
sophisticated online news media like Facebook and Google by realizing the potential required
to use in valuing data in business model. While performing the Resource based review and IT
portfolio framework in the business firm, many challenges may occur but those should be
taken as an added benefit contributing in the organisations success. Concentrating on the
innovating technologies in the business does not always improve the business
competitiveness but along with that the business strategic frameworks that an assess the risks

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of the firm should also be considered. Thus, from the report it is seen that information
technology can greatly add value to business organizations by implementing different
technological strategies in the business model ad hence improves the firm’s overall business
performance and increases competitiveness in the external market.

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References:
Barney, J. (2012). Evaluating the firm’s internal capabilities, Strategic Management and
Competitive Advantage: Concepts, 4th Ed, Pearson (Boston)
Cui, T., Ye, H.J., Teo, H.H. and Li, J., 2015. Information technology and open innovation: A
strategic alignment perspective. Information & Management, 52(3), pp.348-358.
Houston, J.B., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M.F., Park, E.H., Goldstein Hode, M., Halliwell,
M.R., Turner McGowen, S.E., Davis, R., Vaid, S., McElderry, J.A. and Griffith, S.A., 2015.
Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning,
response, and research. Disasters, 39(1), pp.1-22.
Jacobsen, T., 2018. Trusting News Online-A qualitative study of perceptions of online
newspaper credibility among young Norwegian adults (Master's thesis, NTNU).
Lin, Y. and Wu, L.Y., 2014. Exploring the role of dynamic capabilities in firm performance
under the resource-based view framework. Journal of business research, 67(3), pp.407-413.
Lundvall, B.Å., 2016, May. Innovation System Research and Policy Where it came from and
where it might go. Paper to be presented at CAS Seminar, Oslo, December 4, 2007.
Nærland, T.U., 2015. From Musical Expressivity to Public Political Discourse Proper: the
case of Karpe Diem in the aftermath of the Utøya massacre. Popular Communication, 13(3),
pp.216-231.
Nyberg, A.J., Moliterno, T.P., Hale Jr, D. and Lepak, D.P., 2014. Resource-based
perspectives on unit-level human capital: A review and integration. Journal of
Management, 40(1), pp.316-346.

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Thorbjørnsen, R.S., 2018. Immigration framing by Norwegian political actors on Facebook
2015-2017-An empirical case study (Master's thesis, NTNU).
Weill, P., and Aral, S. (2016). Generating premium returns on your IT investments, MIT
Sloan Management Review, 47:2, pp 39-48
Wu, S.P.J., Straub, D.W. and Liang, T.P., 2015. How information technology governance
mechanisms and strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a
matched survey of business and IT managers. Mis Quarterly, 39(2), pp.497-518.
Zaki, M., Lillegraven, T. and Neely, A., 2015. Moving Towards a Data-Driven Business
Model (DDBM) in the Online Newspaper Publishing Industry.