Info Tech Readings S2 Three Worlds Notes PDF

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Information Technologies in Organizations...

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Mastering the Three Worlds of IT: abundance of technologies in the marketplace threaten to overwhelm GMs  sometimes: underwhelming results / failures  managers unsure about the ROI in IT: 47% felt that returns were low, negative, or unknown 3 roles of managers in IT projects:  help select technologies  nurture the adoption  ensure exploitation IT projects are not mere technology installations, but periods of organizational change that managers have a responsibility to manage. They are managerial challenges, not technical ones! (“I can make a project fail, but I can’t make it succeed. For that, I need my [non-IT] business colleagues.”) IT is a General Purpose Technology (GPT): an innovation so important that it causes a jump in the economies normal march of progress (e.g. electricity, transistors,…). GPTs’ effects multiply with the adoption: new innovations emerge as users get used to the new technology. 3 categories of IT: 1. Function IT IT that assists with the execution of discrete tasks examples: word processors, spreadsheets, computer-aided design (CAD) programs  they do not bring their complements with them: the user needs to figure out the use FIT delivers productivity and optimization. 2. Network IT means by which people can communicate with one another IT that facilitates interactions without specifying their parameters bottom-up approach: users decide on how it develops examples: email, instant messaging, blogs, wikis,…  NIT brings complements with it, but allows users to decide how to implement and modify them NIT facilitates collaboration, allows expressions of judgement (egalitarian technologies that lets people express opinions), and fosters emergence (appearance of high-level patterns or information because of low-level interactions -> e.g. employees can easily search and navigate blogs and wikis for trends and data even though nobody is in charge of making them easy to use). NIT increases collaboration. 3. Enterprise IT applications that re-define entire business processes top-down approach: purchased and imposed by the senior management companies can’t slowly create the complements to EIT; changes become necessary as soon as the new systems go live!

examples: CRM, SCM,… EIT redesigns business processes, standardizes work flows, and monitors activities more efficiently. EIT helps standardize and monitor work.

Managerial Tasks across the IT categories: 1. IT selection often, the management decides on the adoption after hearing about it, and will hence try to find a way to adopt it; this is troublesome: it is an outside-in approach. It would be better if the executives asked themselves: “What do we need IT to do for us?” and then try and find a fitting technology (inside-out approach), instead of forcing a technology upon (wellfunctioning) processes. To find out which technologies they might want to use, managers should remember: FIT delivers productivity and optimization, NIT increases collaboration, and EIT helps standardize and monitor work. 2. IT adoption FIT and NIT are relatively simple to adopt: for NIT, because the use of such technologies is voluntary rather than mandatory, they make users feel more, rather than less, in control of their work. For FIT, complements will emerge once users start to experiment with the new technology. EIT, on the other hand, is often hard to adopt: employees usually dislike EIT – they need to change their ways of working. Executives must forcefully intervene: new processes, changed decision rights, and greater interdependence come hand in hand with these technologies. For a successful EIT adoption, managers need to decide at the beginning how key issues about the configuration and adoption will be raised and settled. 3. IT exploitation FIT: exploitation by fine-tuning organizational complements (think of NZA sailing team) NIT: exploitation by letting employees experiment, but also by guiding users (e.g. for wikis: organize them!); break old habits: e.g. replace email with wikis by telling users their voice will only be heard on the wiki (ignore emails) EIT: easy: most users will be motivated to get the most out of a system that was a pain to set up in first place.

For a resource to have an impact on a company’s competitive position, it must be valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable. At first glance, all three IT categories seem to fail to meet these criteria; however, a successfully implemented IT system is exactly that: valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable....