Haliburton Manufacturing Corporation makes industrial air conditioning units for large organizations. Last year the company spent more than $5 million on new technology designed to make its employees more productive and streamline its business processes. The expected return on investment, however, was much lower than the company expected, and production of new air conditioners was not improving. What economic theory helps explain the reason Haliburton is not getting an immediate return on its IT investment?

The Theory of the Learning Curve states that the time a worker requires to perform a task decreases as a he/she gains experience. The time or cost of performing a task (i.e. manufacture one air conditioning unit) decreases at a constant rate as cumulative output increases. Probably the workers haven´t had enough time to master the new production technologies and are still struggling with the new process.

This is true for everyone, for example the first time you drove a car you probably weren´t exactly "good" at it, but as time passed you got much better.