As empresas cada vez mais se relacionam estrategicamente com outras empresas, com vistas a terem maior competitividade. Um dos principais fatores organizacionais internos de apoio à estratégia de uma empresa é a tecnologia de informação e comunicação (TIC). Este artigo apresenta os resultados de uma investigação empírica das percepções de gestores de TIC com atuação no Brasil. Foram investigadas as influências que 13 características de uma rede de alianças estratégicas (RAE) têm sobre quatro propriedades da TIC de uma empresa: maturidade, complexidade, flexibilidade e alinhamento. Os resultados da pesquisa exploratória sugerem que essa influência existe e que se manifesta de várias formas e com distintos graus de força. Há evidências que a maturidade - grau de evolução ou competência - de TIC é a mais fortemente afetada pelas 13 características de RAE investigadas e que a equivalência estrutural é aquela que menos influencia a TIC de uma empresa. Inferimos que, uma vez compreendida as possíveis influências de uma RAE, os gestores de TIC podem antecipar-se a estas influências e planejar melhor a TIC das suas empresas para dar sustentação à sua competitividade.

More and more firms are establishing strategic relationships with other firms in order to enhance their competitiveness. One of the main internal organizational factors used to support this strategy is information and communication technology (ICT). This article shares the main results of an empirical investigation into the perceptions of ICT managers who operate in Brazil. The investigation analyzed the influences of 13 characteristics of a strategic alliance network (SAN) on four properties of a firm's ICT: maturity, complexity, flexibility, and alignment. Its results suggest that this influence exists and that it manifests itself in various ways, and with different degrees of strength. There is evidence that ICT maturity - degree of development or competence - is the property most strongly affected by the 13 SAN characteristics and that structural equivalence is the one that less influences ICT. The authors infer that, once the possible influences of a SAN have been understood, ICT managers can anticipate these influences and better plan their firms' ICT in order to sustain their competitiveness.

This article proposes a three-stage method, with the use of multiple rankings as a starting point in the first stage to help carry out bibliographical research in a more effective and systematic fashion. The relevance of this method is made evident by way of a pioneer empirical investigation on the use and importance of scientific journal rankings as perceived by Brazilian professors in the practice of bibliographical research in the field of Business Administration. The results suggest that, although there is an awareness of the importance of ranking as a criterion for bibliographical research, with a view to identifying the state of the art and relevant research gaps, ranking is in fact hardly used on a regular basis. It is believed that the proposed method can help overcome this problem and contribute to more effective literature reviews and research.