The Determinants of InformationWeek 500 Selection and Its Implications: A Textual Analysis Approach

Abstract

This paper uses textual analysis to examine the determinants and information content of the InformationWeek 500 survey (“IW500”).  Grounded in accounting and information systems literature and using textual analysis, we use forward-looking financial-text based measures of firms’ business prospects as proxies of firm characteristics that are likely to be associated with IW500 selection.  As IW500 selection is a common proxy for IT capability, to advance our understanding of IT capability, we also investigate the implications of the IW500 and its determinants on firm outcomes.  Our results indicate that firms’ forward-looking business prospects are determinants of IW500 selection.  Moreover, we find that after controlling for known determinants of IW500 selection, IW500 continues to explain firm outcomes.  Our findings suggest that firms’ business prospects are important in realizing positive financial outcomes from IT capability and provide new evidence of the information content of the IW500 survey as an IT capability proxy.