دیدگاه منطقی شکل چهار چوب گسترده اداره امور فناوری اطلاعات: مدیریت و درک فعالیت های فناوری اطلاعات

Over the years, Information Technology (IT) has struggled with how to create an effective structure and processes. It is our main thesis that if organizations focused more on implementing a sound IT governance strategy, it might help senior executives to manage not only the IT-related activities, but also the perceptions between IT and the rest of the organization, and, in doing so, foster a more successful IT organization. Using six case studies conducted within the oil and gas industry, we explore differences in perceptions toward IT and in the organization of IT activities. Using an Extended Platform Logic Perspective, we note differences and similarities between the firms, with respect to IT capabilities, relational and integration mechanisms, measures of success, and relationships with the business units. Our results suggest that our colleagues-in-practice have evolved from focusing on one-way architectures within a centralization/decentralization context toward a two-way relationship-oriented approach to managing the IT structure. We conclude by offering some thoughts on how IT executives can help to shape perceptions of IT within their firms and explore how academics can begin to help our colleagues-in-practice as they struggle with the governance of the IT function.

One of the most enduring problems faced by the Information Technology (IT) function is how it should organize and structure itself.1 The term ‘governance’ has been used to broadly describe the policies, structures, and management processes involved in managing the IT function (Brown and Sambamurthy, 1999 and Weill and Broadbent, 2000). Indeed, implementing a sound IT governance strategy is believed to be key for having a successful IT function in organizations (Brown, 1997). It is our main thesis that if organizations focused more on implementing a sound IT governance strategy, it might help senior executives to manage not only the IT-related activities, but also the perceptions between IT and the rest of the organization, and, in doing so, foster a more successful IT organization. In this paper, we use six case studies that were conducted within the oil and gas industry to explore the broad issue of IT governance. In operationalizing ‘IT governance’ we chose to use the notion coined by Sambamurthy and Zmud (2000)—that of ‘organization logic for the IT function’ and especially their ‘platform logic model’. This allows us to move beyond the more basic centralization–decentralization issue of governance, to focus on the practical IT capabilities, relational architectures, and integration architectures that are currently being used in ‘successful’ IT organizations. By focusing on these capabilities and architectures, we hope to elucidate new opportunities for the IT function. We should like to add that the motivation for our work comes from the Sambamurthy and Zmud (2000) call for researchers to better understand the challenges and discoveries of contemporary IT management. They argue that the academic community should begin by examining the logic for organizing IT activities. With the call in mind, we shall apply the platform logic model to IT governance. However, as we discuss in Section 2, we will first extend the original model and add a new dimension to the model: a metric of success. Our ‘extended platform logic model’ will then be used as a theoretical lens to interpret the governance arrangements within six organizations. We believe that by understanding how IT responds to environmental and business imperatives in the structuring of required IT capabilities, and the integration and relational architectures that derive from those capabilities, we will then be able to explain the differences in perceptions that appear to exist between IT and rest of the organization (Ward and Peppard, 1996, Enns and Huff, 2000 and Peppard and Ward, 1999).

In this paper, we have presented an extension to the platform logic model and discussed the new model through the eyes of six case studies. Nonetheless, the discussion does not come without a few limitations. First, all of the responses gathered were from the point of view of IT. Thus, when examining perceptions, we are examining how IT believes that the business unit perceives them. Yet, we argue that, while this is not ideal, the results from Table 3 suggest that the interviews were able to illuminate the key perceptions that these organizations were struggling within their structuring of their governance arrangements. The respondents from the organizations were able to suggest how they were perceived, in that the success metrics that they used allowed them to gather the data to effectively answer questions regarding perceptions. A second possible limitation is the relatively small number of interviews. Yet, the key criterion for choosing respondents was their ability to effectively communicate the structures and the rationale for the governance arrangement. This resulted in a limited number of available respondents that could participate in the study. Nevertheless, each interviewee was a key decision maker within his/her organization, thus allowing us to gather rich insights into the organizations. A third limitation is that we have used the sum of IT capabilities as ostensibly a surrogate for IT strategy. This has two potential problems. One, we have argued that IT capabilities derive from the business strategy, which they may or may not do. While we agree that this is a potential limitation, we have consistently argued that, in our view, governance arises from strategic and environmental imperatives. Thus, at the very foundation of our conceptualization of governance is this notion. Two, we have limited IT strategy to just IT capabilities. We acknowledge this shortcoming and are hopeful that this limitation becomes the basis for future researchers to investigate the link between IT strategy, capabilities, and governance. Despite these limitations, we believe that focusing on the core underpinnings of successful IT organizations in practice should help other organizations successfully adapt to the new reality unfolding before us. More specifically, by examining the relational and integration architectures of the model, we have documented how IT interacts with the business units. By investigating IT capabilities, we have seen how IT views itself and its position within the firm. By examining the various success metrics, we have seen the variety of methods that IT can use to determine its impact on the firm. Our results suggest that researchers need to change their views of IT ‘structure’ to embrace a more social and dynamic existence. Fundamentally, IT governance has moved beyond structure to embrace relationships. For the practitioner, there is no longer the need to focus on centralization/decentralization, but on how relationships are formed and managed. Such relationships can benefit through IT adopting a more marketing orientation. In sum, we believe that we have answered the call of Sambamurthy and Zmud to better understand the challenges and discoveries of IT management.