Resource-Based Perspective on ICT Use and Firm Performance: A Meta-analysis Investigating the Moderating Role of Cross-Country ICT Development Status

•Not all ICTs are strategic resources.•Enabling Technologies (ETs) act as strategic resources and have a significant influence on business performance.•General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) and ETs together act as strategic resources and have a significant influence on business performance.•When ETs are used alone, they provide better performance than when they are used together with GPTs.•ETs have more influence on business performance in countries with more developed ICT infrastructure. Although there is a stream of literature that considers the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to be an advantage-seeking entrepreneurial activity resulting in superior business performance, the findings regarding the impact of ICT use on business performance are heterogeneous in the existing literature. Consequently, a meta-analysis is required in order to comprehend the direction and scope of this relationship, taking into account the national ICT development status across countries. Hence, with a theoretical grounding in the Resource-Based View (RBV), this meta-analysis combines research studies spanning a twenty-two year period (147 studies) on how a country's national ICT development status impacts the relationship between the use of different ICT tools, categorized as either General Purpose Technology or Enabling Technology, and firm performance by applying both bivariate and meta-regression analyses.