Intranet: different configurations and their effects on the performance of corporate value chain's activities

At the present, as many researches evidence, Intra-Business, and in particular Intranet, is the first step an "old economy company" undertakes when approaching the web (www.activemedia.com, www.nua.com; www.forrester.com;). Literature on Intra-Business is still limited and superficial: indeed this issue has been analyzed mainly from a technical viewpoint, while from a managerial viewpoint most of the researches see the company as a black box, listing the advantages of a Intra-Business practice and describing case studies of companies which had successfully introduced the technology, without characterizing in detail the effects of the implemented solutions on the different organizational units and their performance. The paper deals with these issues and in particular, through an in depth empirical research within a sample of companies operating in Italy which have implemented Intranet solutions, it aims to: identify the different configurations of an Intranet solution; identify the categories of performance an Intranet can affect; and, for each configuration of Intranet, using a framework which characterizes the company in terms of activities and processes, identify which performance are affected for each activity and process, detailing them in terms of specific impacts.