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Part One
Strategic Management and Information Systems
Chapter Summary
Key Questions
Chapter 1 Information Systems Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach
Why do information systems matter?
How might the domain of information systems be characterized?
What is the impact of taking a technological view of information systems; how is this changed by a human-centred position?
From what theoretical perspective is information systems best informed?
How do information systems appear from a social theoretical perspective?
Chapter 2 Lessons from Corporate Strategy
How might the domain of corporate strategy be characterized?
Is it possible to pursue strategy as an entirely objective process?
What different approaches are there to corporate strategy?
Is there an integrated approach which gives a strong basis for information systems strategy development?
Chapter 3 Building the Foundations for Information Systems Strategy
What social theoretical foundation is the most relevant to information systems and strategy?
Within a chosen theoretical framework, what are the issues relevant to both information systems and corporate strategy?
How does this theoretical underpinning apply specifically to the domain of information systems strategy?
What does a strategic framework informed from this perspective look like?
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Chapter 1
Information Systems Strategic Management:
An Integrated Approach
Introduction
The domain of IS abounds with examples of the tension between approaches based purely on technology, and those which favour involving participants more deeply in the specification, design, development and ongoing management of the information system. Often, as evidenced by the example below, the focus is primarily on operational issues, but increasingly it is being recognized that nowhere is the need to consider all those âinvolved in and affected by the systemâ more important than in strategic management.
But before focusing specifically on information strategy, I want in this chapter, in order to lay a foundation for applying strategy to the domain, to discuss some of the perspectives that have been taken on IS.
In the late 1980s I was working for a major electronics manufacturing and marketing organization, whose customer service department was looking for ways to improve communications, both between internal customer service engineers (CSEs) and with its customers. Up to that time, CSEs had relied on sales information held on a central computer, but this contained only basic sales and order data, and lacked the sort of information that customers were now beginning to expect. Examples of the questions customers were now asking on a regular basis included: future availability of product not yet manufactured; possible substitute products; the exact status of their order (not yet arrived was no longer good enough!).
Two views of how to address this surfaced within the company, which came to be known as the technology approach and the process approach: within the process approach it was recognized that an understanding of human activity was at least as important as understanding organizational or technological issues.
Those favouring a focus on technology already had a proposed solution. What was needed was a database linked to a network communications system. The database would hold all the necessary data, which could be determined according to an agreed specification. The network would enable communication between the relevant parties, using the now rapidly developing desktop computer and network technologies, in particular shared data files and electronic mail.
Protagonists of the process approach viewed this faith in the ability of technology alone to provide the answers as problematic. They did not have a solution, but more a set of unanswered questions. How would we know when all the necessary data had been captured? Why should a computer-based communication system necessarily enable customer service engineers to work better? The list of questions became endless, and was put forward as a challenge to the over reliance on technology as a solution to the organizationâs problems.
A discussion forum was arranged to determine how to progress, the outcome of which is summarized in Table 1.1.
The two sides found it difficult to reach a common understanding of the situation, and eventually it was left to senior managers to decide on the way forward. The âtechnologyâ route offered a clear statement of the problem, a concrete solution, and a means to that solution which could be monitored and controlled. The âprocessâ route seemed to say that âit all dependsâ, and, while offering a way forward, seemed to give no clear answers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the technological solution was chosen. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we can now state something else with absolute certainty: the project was abandoned without providing the anticipated benefits.
The arguments which flow from this example, which is by no means unique, are many and varied, and lie at the very heart of the information systems (IS) domain. What happened was that the organization had a problem which was a combination of human, organizational and technological factors, which it sought to solve by redefining it in purely technological terms. Why this might happen, and how such a dichotomy of views might impact the IS domain, forms the foundation for this text. Suffice it to say at the moment that the perspective taken of IS can be seen to significantly affect the approach taken and, arguably, the outcome.
Table 1.1 Discussion forum outcomes
| Technology | Process |
| The problem can be stated as the need to design a communications âarchitectureâ. | The problem hinges on what CSEs do, and how the organization might better facilitate this. |
| The solution is a centralized database linked know, to a computer network. | The solution is not apparent yet. For all we it might not be computer based. |
| The solution can be reached by approaching the problem in a step-by-step manner. | While this approach is fine if you are working with technology, it does not help us when dealing with the ideas of participants involved in the problem. |
This Chapter Will Examine: why IS is an important domain for study
the nature of the information systems domain, from theoretical and practical perspectives
the dominant view(s) of information systems as determined by approaches to information systems development
a comparison of âhardâ (technology-based) and âsoftâ (human-centred) perspectives on information systems, and proposals for combining them
a framework for the study and practice of information systems informed from social systems theory.
Why do Information Systems Matter?
There seem to be three key factors which give rise to the importance of information systems as a domain:
IS has pragmatic roots. Its importance stems from the need for modern commercial and public sector organizations to lever an advantage from the information they hold and manage. But there are organizational implications inherent in this, requiring understanding of forms of organization, work flow and so on.
Almost always it is technologically enabled. So there are strong links to the application of computing.
It has become an important subject for most business schools and computer science departments. However, in spite of this, IS clearly struggles for a solid academic or disciplinary foundation.
So perhaps we should refine the question âwhy do information systems matter?â It is not just that âIS mattersâ, but that what matters is that we develop a coherent approach to IS which fuses the pragmatic with the theoretical and organizational needs with academic study.
This book is one attempt at providing such an approach. It focuses specifically on information strategy, but the concepts are, I would argue, equally applicable to operationally managing IS.
Information Systems as a Domain
A study of the theory and practice of information systems soon reveals some ways in which the above example might be better understood. The demand from business organizations is for âsystemsâ which show an objective return in terms of cost, efficiency, effectiveness, or, more typically, all three. Systems developers are driven to provide low cost solutions to perceived business problems. The management of IS becomes the design, development and management of technological solutions to identified problems. However, while most frequently information systems management is pursued as a predominantly technical endeavour, it nonetheless has to work within a given social framework.
This chapter investigates these issues further, using an area of information systems study and practical application which has been given perhaps the most attention: information systems development (ISD).
From Technology-Based to Human-Centred Approaches
The Technology-Based Approach
It has been argued that the design and development of information systems have been traditionally dominated by technical, problem-solving approaches, which, as can be seen from the earlier example, lead to tensions when the system to be developed is more process or user based. The need for discovering the requirements of users was not disputed by early information systems developers, but was typically achieved by including a user analysis stage within an existing problem-solving approach. This approach, inherited from computer systems development, relied on the systems development life cycle (SDLC) as the primary method.
The systems development life cycle is a stagewise or waterfall method, whereby each stage is undertaken in a linear sequence, generally requiring the completio...
