اطلاعیه های سرمایه گذاری فناوری اطلاعات و ارزش بازار در اقتصادهای در حال گذار: شواهدی از بورس اوراق بهادار ورشو

This study examines stock market reactions to announcements of information technology investments in Poland, an emerging market and transition economy. Based on 66 announcements by companies traded at the Warsaw Stock Exchange in the period 2002–2009, our study confirms some previously published results from studies conducted primarily in highly developed markets, but also shows that specific characteristics of announcements play a more important role than has been commonly assumed. Our results indicate that investors in Poland react more positively if systems are acquired from global rather than local vendors. Announcements about completed projects are more positively received than announcements about planned or in-progress projects. Furthermore, announcements in Polish, targeted at existing shareholders, are more likely to be received positively than similar announcements released in English, targeting global investors.

For most public companies in today’s challenging business environment, the performance of their stocks is seen as an important proxy measure of their business success. If a company’s stocks are seen as outperforming the competition, it is usually much easier for the particular company to obtain additional capital for expansion. In contrast, underperforming stocks may ruin the trust in a particular company and make it difficult to secure any needed financing. Access to private capital is particularly important for companies in transition economies. Frequently, these companies developed out of previously state-owned enterprises, underwent privatization and substantial restructuring, and are on the way to claim their position in the global market. For many of these companies, the stock market is the major source of capital (Jermakowicz and Gornik-Tomaszewski, 1998).

We believe that our work makes several significant contributions to the existing knowledge in economics of IT. For one, our study widens the existing repository of event studies related to IT and confirms that extending this type of research to settings other than the long established and mature market economies may produce quite different results. Furthermore, our research expands the existing body of knowledge related to the topic of IT in transition economies, adding new perspectives by examining, for example, the differences between stock market reactions to IT investment announcements from global vendors versus small local vendors that started operations after the transition to a market economy, and the impact of the language in which announcements are made.