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Most new organizations use information technologies to accomplish their activities. IT's importance stems from its role as one of the main tools employed in the service activities of business organizations (Jabbouri et al., 2016). Customers' needs are constantly changing, resulting in a short product life cycle that necessitates a shift in these technologies (Chung et al., 2003). The concept of information technology infrastructure flexibility (ITIF) comes from a need to have IT that can face the rapid technology changes (Nurshuhada & Hafez, 2011). Since IT infrastructure is so essential in transmitting knowledge, many businesses put a lot of money into it (Hou, 2019). Few studies have examined ITIF as a dependent variable (Anwar et al., 2018). The organizations' possession of immutable infrastructure will impede the organization's performance of its activities and increase costs and the inability to meet customers' needs (Makhloufi et al., 2018). Also, the lack of flexibility of information technology will lead to delays in the completion of new projects and a decline in the organisation's performance (Masa’deh, 2013). The importance of understanding the effect of ITIF cannot be overstated. It aids in rationalising investor decisions and determining which aspects should be considered when deciding whether to invest in information technology that aid in productivity and effectiveness. The link between IT investment and a firm's performance has been discussed in the scientific literature (Bardhan et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2016). The study conducted by (Harris & Katz, 1991) revealed a relationship between companies' performance and the level of investment intensity in information technology. Some researchers argue that IT investment relates indirectly to a firm's performance through contextual factors (Bharadwaj, 2000; Campbell, 2012).
Decisions in general, and investment decisions in particular, are influenced by many factors, the most important of which is biased behavior (Kartini & Nahda, 2021).
Bias is defined as making unfair judgments due to personal beliefs and opinions. Irrational attitudes or behaviours that may unintentionally affect the human decision-making process are known as behavioural biases (Shaikh et al., 2019). The topic of investor behavioural biases is one of the topics that have attracted many researchers recently (Isidore R. & P., 2019). The availability of information is a prerequisite for rational decision-making (Al-Sabaawi and Dahlan, 2018, 2019). Generally, people make poor decisions due to a lack of information (Kumar & Goyal, 2016). Behavioural biases in investment decision-making are considered irrational (Jhandir & Elahi, 2014). Some studies have found that investors with limited knowledge are more vulnerable to problems (Madaan & Singh, 2019). Investors often face uncertainty resulting from the quality and quantity of available information (Fernández et al., 2011). Most of the scientific studies related to behavioural finance have indicated behavioural biases among various investors. However, limited studies show the impact of ITIF on the decision to invest in technologies (Anwar & Masrek, 2015).
Similarly the effects of herding bias among individual investors got limited attention in the literature (Fernández et al., 2011); (Kumar & Goyal, 2015). In a developing country like Iraq, such research is scarce (Zahera & Bansal, 2018). Therefore this study attempts to find the effects of ITIF and herding bias on the investment decision making process and firm's performance in the Iraqi context.