Information Technology Management & Implementation
Information technology (IT) has been the catalyst for the new sources of economic wealth generated during what is known as the Information Age. According to Michael Porter, “Strategy is the route to competitive advantage that will determine performance” (Wilson, 1991, 39). A variety of industries and some specific organization have successfully implemented information technologies enabling them to enjoy significant competitive advantages. Others have not.
Much of the theory and practice of organizational IT implementation assumes that organizational decisions are “consequences of individuals and organizational units objectively collecting, evaluating, and applying information in a rational manner to make choices on behalf of the organization” (Levine and Rossmoore, 1993, 55). Yet a review of the literature with respect to successful IT implementation demonstrates that this kind of rationality may be an exception and not the rule. Studies demonstrate that there is a correlation between specific cultural attributes of the organization and the successful implementation of information technology systems. This is true for both people-oriented and production-oriented organizational aspects. The problem of this research will be to discover successfully implemented IT strategies in the organizational context, what makes them successful and what barriers to the establishment and implementation of strategy have been experienced.
The objectives of this research are as follows:
Elucidation of successful IT implementation strategies,
Elucidation of barriers to the establishment and implementation of IT strategies; and,
Elucidation of the impact of organizational culture (people and production processes) on the success or failure of IT implementation.
According to Kwei (1998), organizations are increasingly finding themselves in the information business and taking...