An Examination of IT Planning in a Large,Diversified Public Organization*

The conduct of information technology (IT) planning processes has been of dominant managerial concern in public and private organizations. Yet, current IT planning research offers little guidance on the types of planning actions and behaviors that are appropriate to organizational contexts. We focus on the conduct of the IT planning process by describing an exploratory research project. The project empirically examined a number of issues associated with managing IT planning within a single large public enterprise, particularly identifying actions and behaviors related to producing quality IT plans. The results of the study yield some useful set of guidelines; most interesting is the importance of building IT infrastructure based on IT sophistication and innovativeness for large agencies to improve plan quality. Other recommendations include having a focused, balanced technology and business planning orientation that incorporates a strategic outlook, support of top management, attention to business planning, and early consensus among planning members.     

A real option theoretic fuzzy evaluation model for enterprise resource planning investment

The high failure rate of ERP implementation is due to a common pitfall that ERP projects are often enacted as merely investment into installation of IT infrastructure, rather than systematic planning of operation changes, business process re-engineering and a paradigm shift for the operation and management. To manage ERP investment in a changing environment for high payoff, this paper adopts a real option theoretic method. Fuzzy payoff valuation is introduced to deal with uncertainties in order to minimize the risk of failure. The proposed ERP evaluation model is geared towards small and medium enterprises. A case study is presented to validate the proposed fuzzy real options. The results indicate the potential of modeling ERP investment as “Expand”, “Contain” and “Abandon” options in different scenarios. The fuzzy real option model bestows a novel ex-ante cost analysis for justifying ERP investment in the implementation cycle.     

Linking IT planning to business strategy

Information Strategy Planning is of growing importance. There are available a variety of formal methodologies for carrying out information systems planning, none of which are particularly well aligned to the current business planning views. The author was concerned that the value of the approaches used in business planning, most notably those of Michael Porter, were being ignored by the information systems planning methodologies. Both mechanisms yield insight and both are required to make strategic gains from IT. The paper explains the experience at Simon Engineering in combining Porter's value chain and five forces approach with the more usual Information Engineering methodology for information planning. A workshop approach was adopted and the conclusions drawn that the information strategy must be seen and developed as an integral part of, and at the same time as, the business strategy, and that both Information Engineering and Porter's approaches are necessary component parts of creating an integrated business and IT strategy. IT strategies cannot be developed independently of the business strategy, nor should they follow the business strategy. Successful IT strategies must be developed at the same time as the business strategy.     

Towards a global economy

The author, a well known consultant on planning for technology, argues cogently for planning on a global scale. The alternative to widespread recognition and acceptance of the need for global planning is, he says: “the choice of which of the weapons existing we, as a species, shall use to commit suigenicide.”     

Socio-cognitive processes in strategy formation – A conceptual framework

This paper should set the frame for the management focus by introducing the cognitive perspective in management research. The cognitive view has become a considerable perspective in describing and explaining strategic processes and significant advances have been provided especially in the last decade. However, the primary concern of cognitive-oriented strategy process research is still on strategic decision-making and therefore lags behind encompassing conceptional developments in process research. By drawing on the “genesis” approach of Kirsch, this paper develops a framework for explaining the formation of shared strategic orientations from a socio-cognitive perspective, which should broaden the “dominant research design”.     

Multiple Conceptualizations of Small Business Web Use and Benefit*

Small businesses play an important role in the U.S. economy and there is anecdotal evidence that use of the Web is beneficial to such businesses. There is, however, little systematic analysis of the conditions that lead to successful use of and thereby benefits from the Web for small businesses. Based on the innovation adoption, organizations, and information systems (IS) implementation literature, we identify a set of variables that are related to adoption, use, and benefits of information technology (IT), with particular emphasis on small businesses. These variables are reflective of an organization's contextual characteristics, its IT infrastructure, Web use, and Web benefits. Since the extant research does not suggest a single theoretical model for Web use and benefits in the context of small businesses, we adopt a modeling approach and explore the relationships between “context‐IT‐use‐benefit” (CIUB) through three models—partial‐mediator, reduced partial‐mediator, and mediator. These models posit that the extent of Web use by small businesses and the associated benefits are driven by organizations’ contextual characteristics and their IT infrastructure. They differ in the endogeneity/exogeneity of the extent of IT sophistication, and in the direct/mediated effects of organizational context. We examine whether the relationships between variables identified in the literature hold within the context of these models using two samples of small businesses with national coverage, including various sizes, and representing several industry sectors. The results show that the evidence for patterns of relationships is similar across the two independent samples for two of these models. We highlight the relationships within the reduced partial‐mediator and mediator models for which conclusive evidence are given by both samples. Implications for small business managers and providers of Web‐based technologies are discussed.     

Integrating multicriteria decision analysis and scenario planning—Review and extension

Scenario planning and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are two key management science tools used in strategic planning. In this paper, we explore the integration of these two approaches in a coherent manner, recognizing that each adds value to the implementation of the other. Various approaches that have been adopted for such integration are reviewed, with a primary focus on the process of constructing preferences both within and between scenarios. Biases that may be introduced by inappropriate assumptions during such processes are identified, and used to motivate a framework for integrating MCDA and scenario thinking, based on applying MCDA concepts across a range of “metacriteria” (combinations of scenarios and primary criteria). Within this framework, preferences according to each primary criterion can be expressed in the context of different scenarios. The paper concludes with a hypothetical but non-trivial example of agricultural policy planning in a developing country.     

Environmental Factors,Managerial Processes,and Information Technology Investment Strategies

Although significant research attention has been directed at understanding the value of information technology (IT) investments for firms, very little attention has been paid to understand the IT investment behavior of firms. This article seeks to fill this void. We introduce the concept of IT investment strategy, defined by dimensions of intensity and proactiveness, to characterize the IT investment behavior of firms. Synthesizing the environmental deterministic and strategic choice perspectives of a firm's strategic decision making, we examine the effects of environmental factors, managerial processes, and the interplay between them on IT investment strategy. Specifically, we examine the impact of environmental factors such as industry clockspeed and information intensity on IT investment strategy. We also incorporate the strategic choice perspective to argue that managerial processes such as frequent chief executive officer—chief information officer communications and collective information systems planning play a critical role in shaping the firm's IT investment strategy. The empirical results show that the environmental variables are related to IT investment strategy. Besides, managerial processes serve as a means to understand the environment and thus moderate the relationships between the environmental variables and the various facets of IT investment strategy. The conceptualization of IT investment strategy and the focus on both environmental determinism and strategic choice should enrich our understanding of firms’ IT investing behavior.     

Rationality in Strategic Information Technology Decisions: The Impact of Shared Domain Knowledge and IT Unit Structure*

Rationality is a fundamental concept to several models of IT planning and implementation. Though the importance of following rational processes in making strategic IT decisions is well acknowledged, there is not much understanding on why discrepancies occur in the IT decision‐making process and what factors affect rationality. Drawing upon structural and resource‐based perspectives of strategy, this study examines the influence of shared domain knowledge and IT unit structure on rationality in strategic IT decisions. Data were gathered from 223 senior IT executives using a survey to examine the relationships among the research constructs. The results suggest a positive impact of shared domain knowledge and formalization of IT unit structure on rationality in strategic IT decisions. Further, a highly centralized IT unit structure was found to negatively influence shared domain knowledge. On the other hand, formalization of IT structure positively influenced shared domain knowledge. The implications of the findings for research and practice are presented.     

Digital orientation: Conceptualization and operationalization of a new strategic orientation

Although there is ample evidence that digital technologies are strategically important for value creation, extant literature lacks holistic concepts that capture an organization’s strategic orientation concerning digital innovation and transformation initiatives. This study integrates recent digitalization themes with IT business alignment research to conceptualize a new strategic orientation construct: digital orientation. The construct is manifested in four dimensions which we operationalize for computer-aided text analysis. We validate the construct based on 6498 shareholder letters from large US firms over 16 years. Building upon the resource-based view, we validate the digital orientation construct by linking it to firm performance. Our findings advance the literature on strategic orientations and bring the domains of strategy and information systems closer together. The novel digital orientation construct and the validated measurement instrument lead to many new research opportunities.     

Leveraging Supply Chain Integration through Planning Comprehensiveness: An Organizational Information Processing Theory Perspective

This study extends prior research on supply chain planning and integration by examining the underlying capabilities by which firms exploit the information they gain from integration activities. We use organizational information processing theory (OIPT) to develop hypotheses that identify the comprehensiveness of an organization's supply chain planning capabilities as an important mediator in the relationship between its supply chain integration activities and its operational performance. Further, our interpretation of OIPT suggests that an organization's usage of technology‐enabled supply chain management systems (SCMS) moderates these effects. Using survey data from 445 global firms, we estimate the corresponding moderated‐mediation structural model. The results indicate that usage of SCMS enables organizations to better utilize the information they gain from external integration efforts (relationships with customers and suppliers), thus improving the comprehensiveness of their supply chain planning capabilities. In contrast, the use of SCMS appears to be a partial substitute for internal integration as a driver of planning comprehensiveness. Most importantly, the results suggest that planning comprehensiveness is a significant generative means by which integration and technology investments produce superior operational performance. These findings provide a richer and more theoretically grounded explanation of relationships between supply chain integration, supply chain planning, and operational performance.     

Competitive and Cooperative Positioning in Supply Chain Logistics Relationships*

Cooperative logistics relationships require the sharing of information, which must be enabled by the integration of disparate information systems across partners. In this article, we theorize business‐to‐business logistics relationships should be managed using cooperative and competitive postures. Based on data from 91 dyadic relationships using interorganizational information technology (IT), we find that performance gains accrue when parties share strategic information and customize IT; mutual trust enables IT customization and strategic‐information flows and equitable relationship‐specific investments positively impact IT customization, mutual trust, and performance. Among other scholarly and practical implications discussed, partners should compete on resources for IT customization and cooperate to share strategic information. Managers tend to think of relationships with firms as polar opposites and view them as entirely cooperative or entirely competitive. Our results support active balancing and understanding of both competitive and cooperative stances. Such an approach enables conditions for participation symmetry that yields greater performance gains.     

Parenting in Complex Structures

In complex, interdependent corporate structures, there is overlap and sharing of responsibilities between the operating units and the corporate parent. As a result, the distinction between “business” and “parent” is blurred and a focus on the role and added-value of the parent is less obviously relevant. This article explores the nature of corporate parenting in complex structures and draws out the particular demands placed on parent managers in these structures. It also examines the role of the parent’s functional support staff and the complications that result from having more than one level of parenting. It concludes that there are some special parenting challenges in complex structures, but that the quest for “parenting advantage” should remain a fundamental driver of corporate strategy and structure.     

创业导向与探索式创新的关系：一个双中介效应模型

  创业导向对探索式创新的影响决定创业企业在不确定商业生态环境中的市场机会捕捉能力和价值创造效果。虽然已有研究部分证实了创业导向与探索式创新的相互作用,但面对创业企业生存环境不确定性更高、资源约束更明显的事实,创业企业如何借助合理的战略决策和高效的资源使用行为帮助自身实现由生存到发展的过渡显得尤为重要,鲜有研究对此类问题予以深入探讨。         基于战略创业理论、创新管理理论和资源基础观理论,以创业导向为解释变量,以探索式创新为被解释变量,引入战略灵活性和创业拼凑两个可能影响导向与产出关系的关键要素,探讨创业导向对探索式创新的直接影响,以及战略灵活性和创业拼凑可能起到的特殊中介作用。借鉴并改进已有研究的成熟量表形成问卷,选取深圳的创业企业为调研对象,以电子邮件的形式发放问卷,基于最终获得的283份有效问卷,采用结构方程和双中介模型的研究方法,全面检验创业导向、战略灵活性、创业拼凑与探索式创新之间的关系。         研究结果表明,创业导向、战略灵活性和创业拼凑均对探索式创新产生促进作用;创业导向与战略灵活性呈显著的正相关关系,也对创业拼凑产生积极影响;战略灵活性与创业拼凑呈显著的正相关关系。创业拼凑在创业导向与探索式创新之间和战略灵活性与探索式创新之间起部分中介作用。由战略灵活性和创业拼凑形成的中介链部分中介了创业导向与探索式创新之间的关系。         研究结论从导向-策略-行为-产出的研究框架拓展了战略创业理论的研究内容,揭示了创业导向、战略灵活性、创业拼凑与探索式创新之间的关系机理,为创业企业理解战略灵活性和创业拼凑的影响、充分实践和发挥创业导向的创新精神、促进探索式创新活动的持续开展提供了重要的理论依据和经验证据。     

Global Multisourcing Strategy: The Emergence of a Supplier Portfolio in Services Offshoring

In today's global services outsourcing arena, increasing numbers of companies adopt “multisourcing,” that is, they select and combine information technology (IT) and business services from multiple providers. The literature on IT outsourcing and supply chain management has identified critical tradeoffs involved in increasing the number of suppliers and has strongly recommended focusing on a handful of strategic partners to balance these tradeoffs. Committing to a few strategic partners, however, may prevent a firm from discovering new suppliers, or even supply regions. Such missed opportunities may be particularly limiting in the context of offshoring professional services, which has exhibited rapid changes in supplier markets in the last decade. Thus, firms may want to engage in a more intensive multisourcing in services. If they do so, their success will depend on a global sourcing process that effectively addresses the critical tradeoffs involved. To explore how a global sourcing process can support multisourcing, we conducted a qualitative longitudinal case study of a large financial services institution that developed a varied global supply base to obtain offshore professional services. Our analysis results in a theory that emphasizes (i) advantages of a multiple provider strategy in rapidly changing global supply markets; (ii) the critical role of middle managers in enabling continuous innovation in the supplier structure; and (iii) the importance of the global sourcing process combining top–down and bottom–up decision making in multisourcing.     

Fit in strategic information technology management research: an empirical comparison of perspectives

The impacts of information technology on business performance has been a focus of research in recent years. In this regard, contingency models based on the notion of “fit” between the organization's management of IT, its environment, strategy, and structure seem to show promise. Six perspectives are examined as they pertain to the relationships between the firm's environmental uncertainty, its strategic orientation, its structure, its strategic management of IT, and its performance, namely moderation, mediation and matching as bivariate approaches to fit, and covariation, profile deviation and gestalts as systems approaches. These relationships are analyzed by means of an empirical study of 110 small enterprises. Results obtained from applying and comparing the six perspectives illustrate their significant differences and confirm the need for conceptual and methodological rigor when applying contingency theory in strategic information technology management research.     

A Resource‐Based View of Strategic IT Alignment: How Knowledge Sharing Creates Competitive Advantage

A critical decision problem for top management, and the focus of this study, is whether the CEO (chief executive officer) and CIO (chief information officer) should commit their time to formal planning with the expectation of producing an information technology (IT)‐based competitive advantage. Using the perspective of the resource‐based view, a model is presented that examines how strategic IT alignment can produce enhanced organizational strategies that yield competitive advantage. One hundred sixty‐one CIOs provided data using a postal survey. Results supported seven of the eight hypotheses. They showed that information intensity is an important antecedent to strategic IT alignment, that strategic IT alignment is best explained by multiple constructs which operationalize both process and content measures, and that alignment between the IT plan and the business plan is significantly related to the use of IT for competitive advantage. Study results raise questions about the effect of CEO participation, which appears to be the weak link in the process, and also about the perception of the CIO on the importance of CEO involvement. The paper contributes to our understanding of how knowledge sharing in the alignment process contributes to the creation of superior organizational strategies, provides a framework of the alignment‐performance relationship, and furnishes several new constructs.     

全球战略:一个文献综述

全球战略是国际商务和战略管理领域的一个重要研究问题。本文通过对相关文献进行考察,试图提出一个对全球战略的综合认识。我们的文献回顾显示:(1)全球战略包含多种要素,这些要素可能单独存在,也可能同时存在并起作用;(2)组织设计、组织协调和战略制定过程的公正程度影响全球战略的执行;(3)全球战略对企业绩效的影响受到全球战略类型、企业层面因素和外部环境因素的调节;(4)竞争环境的变化影响全球战略的演变,在一定条件下,全球战略也会向多国战略和地区战略转变。     

Countering Overseas Power in Global Value Chains: Information Asymmetries and Subcontracting in the Plastics Industry

Resource Dependency Theory (RDT) and Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis have been deployed in the strategic and international management literatures to address questions of power in dyadic relationships and global production networks, respectively. This paper integrates the two theoretical approaches in order to expand RDT, using insights from Hirschman's exit/voice model to show the options available to some firms but not others. Using the relationship between buyers and contract manufacturers from GVC analysis, we find a correlation between firm size and choice of strategic action in response to contract manufacturers' dependence on buyers. Large firms follow an acquiescence strategy while small manufacturers follow an avoidance strategy, able to use both exit and voice strategies. Enabled by scale or control over information, both of these approaches successfully reduce uncertainty and provide a source of sustained competitive advantage. Using a study of the production chain in consumer plastics manufacturing in China, we show how dependent firms respond to GVC induced pressure. We find that based on the size of the contract manufacturer, the range of strategic responses to power is constrained by the nature of the dependency in global value chains. This opens important insights into the role that structural characteristics of organizations (like size) play in determining strategic freedom.