Strategic information systems: Reflections and prospectives (original) (raw)
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Today there are few organizations that can afford to ignore information technology and few individuals who would prefer to be without it. As managerial tasks become more complex, so the nature of the required information systems changes-from structured, routine support to ad hoc, unstructured, complex enquiries at the highest levels of management. As with the first three editions, this fourth edition of Strategic Information Management: Challenges and Strategies in Managing Information Systems presents the many complex and inter-related issues associated with the management of information systems. The book provides a rich source of material reflecting recent thinking on the key issues facing executives in information systems management. It draws from a wide range of contemporary articles written by leading experts from North America, Asia, and Europe.
The Interplay of Strategic Management and Information Technology
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The authors trace historical developments in the fields of information technology (IT) and strategic management. IT's evolution from the mainframe era to the Internet era has been accompanied by a shift in the strategic emphasis of IT. In the early days, IT's contribution to the organization was largely information provision, monitoring and control. Current research at the intersection of IT and strategic management increasingly highlights the impact of IT in terms of informing strategic decisions and enabling information flow vis-à-vis all manner of organizational processes. We believe these fields are ripe for research focusing on their complementary impact on organizational performance.
The role of information systems within corporate strategy and management policies new challenges
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Until now, IT engineers, and particularly project teams working to tight deadlines, have felt that they are little more than IT masons, with no clear overall vision of what they are on. Today they have to become bona fide architects, which take time. It is also necessary to federate-within a department in charge of IT landscaping and functional architecture-the IT architecture skills which will define the overall corporate model and ensure interoperability between information systems. This high-level team then constructs a global vision, and guarantees coherence between the various system components through direct involvement in making important, formative decisions such as drawing up benchmark reference systems and defining projects.
Beyond strategic information systems: towards an IS capability
The evolution of information technology (IT) in organizations is often portrayed as following three eras-Data Processing, Management Information Systems, and Strategic Information Systems (SIS)-each displaying distinct characteristics regarding the application of IT and having different objectives. While investments in IT continue to made for both efficiency and effectiveness purposes, the SIS era is premised on management proactively seeking out opportunities for competitive advantage through IT, with approaches to information systems (IS) strategy formulation accommodating the requirement for both alignment of IS/IT investments with corporate strategy and assessing the disruptive impact of technology and the options for its use in shaping business strategy. Frameworks, methodologies and tools have been developed to support the objectives of the SIS era, yet the mechanisms through which organizations achieve repeated and sustained value from IT has received scant attention. Drawing on resource-based theory, this paper proposes a perspective on the management of IT in organizations that specifically considers how organizations can continuously derive and leverage value through IT. The analysis moves beyond a focus on identifying 'strategic systems' and develops the concept of an IS capability, suggesting that it heralds the arrival of a new era. The paper presents a model of an IS capability, outlines its core components and illustrates its application. q
Information systems strategy is of central importance to IS practice and research. Our extensive review of the literature suggests that the concept of IS strategy is a term that is used readily; however, it is also a term that is not fully understood. In this study, we follow a perspective paradigm based on the strategic management literature to define IS strategy as an organizational perspective on the investment in, deployment, use, and management of IS. Through a systematic literature search, we identify the following three conceptions of IS strategy employed implicitly in 48 articles published in leading IS journals that focus on the construct of IS strategy: (1) IS strategy as the use of IS to support business strategy; (2) IS strategy as the master plan of the IS function; and (3) IS strategy as the shared view of the IS role within the organization. We find the third conception best fits our definition of IS strategy. As such, we consequently propose to operationalize IS strategy as the degree to which the organization has a shared perspective to seek innovation through IS. Specifically, our proposed IS strategic typology suggests an organization's IS strategy falls into one of the two defined categories (i.e., IS innovator or IS conservative) or is simply undefined. We also develop measures for this new typology. We argue that the proposed instrument, which was cross-validated across both chief information officers and senior business executives, has the potential to serve as a diagnostic Chen et al./Information Systems Strategy tool through which the organization can directly assess its IS strategy. We contend that our reconceptualization and opera-tionalization of IS strategy provides theoretical and practical implications that advance the current level of understanding of IS strategy from extant studies within three predominant literature streams: strategic IS planning, IS/business strategic alignment, and competitive use of IS.
Strategic information systems planning: A case study from the financial services industry
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is an important topic for managers and researchers alike. However, there is evidence of a gap between SISP research and practice. Taking this situation as a motivation, we conducted an in depth case study on SISP to investigate this gap. The study was carried out in a German financial services company (FSC) over a period of five months in summer 2003. During this time, the enterprise situation and the information system (IS) practices situation of FSC were studied with respect to the SISP approach in place. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that practitioners largely ignore academic literature and do not use it in support of their SISP endeavours. This is all the more striking since FSC extensively used guidance from IS research in other fields such as systems analysis and software development. Our case study examines in detail two possible explanations for the gap: firstly a lacking transfer of academic knowledge to practice, and secondly deficiencies in the academic knowledge base itself. In fact, our observations highlight a disconnect between academic discussion and practical conduct. However, we found that the ignorance of academic literature on SISP is not primarily caused by a constrained knowledge transfer. In order to exclude communication barriers, we filtered the academic discussion according to the specific situation and the needs of FSC and translated it into practical recommendations. Nevertheless, the academic arguments we put forward hardly had any impact, either on IT managers' thinking or on SISP practice at FSC. Though academic literature was partly perceived as inspiring, it was not regarded as a touchstone for SISP practice. Academia, in the eyes of FSC's practitioners, ignores the ''real problems'' and thus is not accredited as a relevant source of advice. Moreover, in a final discussion with FSC's senior IT executives we got the impression that the professional identity of FSC's IT management -and more specifically the CIO's role -was different from interpretations 0963-8687/$ -see front matter Ó
Strategic information systems research: An archival analysis
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 2010
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS) has been an international outlet for Information Systems research that focuses on strategic issues since 1991. This paper reports on an analysis of the research published in JSIS to date. The paper presents a preliminary classification system for research topics related to Strategic Information Systems into which all 316 JSIS research papers as at end 2009 are classified. Discussion on changing emphases in topics over time is provided, in the context of the editorial philosophy of the journal. The paper seeks to stimulate discussion on future directions for research in Strategic Information Systems.