Information Strategy in Adhocratic Businesses

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Information Strategy in Adhocratic Businesses

Dr Ernest Jordan

Dept. of Information Systems

City University of Hong Kong

Tat Chee Avenue

Kowloon, Hong Kong

(currently at Macquarie Graduate School of Management)

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

An investigation has been carried out that examines the relationship between an

organisation's structure and the information systems that support its operations.

Twenty five business units in an international bank were studied in terms of

organisational structure and information systems. This paper examines in detail the

eight business units that were classified as adhocracies. End user computing was

commonly used as the strategy for effectively using information technology in these

units. A hypothesis derived from the work of Mintzberg was tested and found to be of

limited usefulness.


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1. INTRODUCTION

The specific need to carry out strategic planning for the information systems (IS)

and information technology (IT) infrastructure of the organisation became obvious in

larger organisations as budgets increased and the impacts, both inside and outside

the organisation, became more significant (Lederer and Mendelow, 1986;

Brancheau and Wetherbe, 1987; Earl, 1989). The need increased for many when it

appeared that competitors were able to achieve competitive advantage through

these technologies (Wiseman and MacMillan, 1984; Porter and Millar, 1985). It was

made even more pressing through the decentralisation and distribution of computer

power that enabled user managers to dramatically change the ways in which their

business activities were carried out (Lee, 1988; Lederer and Mendelow, 1988).

Initial approaches to the task of carrying out information systems strategic

planning (ISSP) were simple models and frameworks that helped understanding and

showed opportunities but did not lead to an implementable plan (McLean and

Soden, 1977; King, 1978; Nolan, 1979). Since then many methodologies have been

developed that will guide the user to an IT development portfolio (Earl, 1989;

Lederer and Sethi, 1988). Most methodologies have been pragmatically developed

and investigate three areas: business needs, an enhancement path for existing

systems, and technology-driven opportunities. A common weakness is the

technique for evaluation of alternative proposals created in the investigations. The

need to ensure that the development plan fits with the organisation has also

received little attention in the established methodologies (McFarlan, 1990).

ISSP remains complex, expensive and uncertain. Organisations that have

carried out ISSP are not assured of success in developing applications of IT that will

achieve competitive advantage (Earl et al., 1988). Conversely, organisations maydevelop successful applications without engaging in ISSP. Our aim is to provide IS


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strategic planners with additional tools to enable them to carry out shorter, quicker

strategic assessments and to enable them to evaluate more critically some of the

proposals raised in the strategic planning process. In particular, planners should be

able to evaluate the alignment of a potential application with the organisation's

competitive strategy, and its compatibility with the way in which the organisation

functions.

In looking for a theoretical foundation for ISSP, research results point

towards an organisational role for information and a competitive or strategic role for

information. While the competitive strategy approach has been widely researched

(Sabherwal and King, 1991; Bergeron et al. 1991; Weill, 1990; for example), here

we examine the contribution of organisational structure, which has been little

considered (Tavakolian, 1989; Iivari, 1992).

2. THE ORGANISATIONAL VIEW OF INFORMATION

Mintzberg's structural forms of organisations

Here we extend the analysis of Leifer (1988) by carrying out a more detailed

examination of the organisational structure. In his seminal work on organisational

structures, Mintzberg (1979) breaks down any organisation into five basic parts: the

strategic apex, middle line, operating core, technostructure and support staff; shown

in Fig. 1. The operating core carries out the elementary functions of production of

the organisation; it is supervised directly by the middle line, and the strategic apex

includes senior management and members of the board. The technostructure

consists of analysts, technologists and other specialists who are concerned with

designing the work processes of others (mostly the operating core), generally to

bring about standardisation. The support staff provide support to the organisation

outside the flow of productive work; from legal services to canteens, print room tocleaners.


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Operating core

Strategic

SupportTechno- Middleline

apex

staffstructure

Fig. 1 The Structural Components of the Organisation (Mintzberg, 1979)

Mintzberg describes five distinct ways that work may be coordinated, that are used

depending upon the complexity and dynamic nature of the organisation's

environment, and interdependencies of the work tasks being undertaken in the

operating core; namely:

direct supervision,

standardisation of work processes,

standardisation of outputs,

standardisation of skills, and

mutual adjustment.

Each particular coordinating mechanism allows one of the basic parts to

become the dominant, controlling part of the organisation. They are the strategic

apex, technostructure, middle line, operating core and support staff, respectively.

For each of them in turn, there is a corresponding form of the organisational

structure, shown in Table 1. Mintzberg names the characteristic organisational

structures as simple structure, machine bureaucracy, divisionalised form,

professional bureaucracy and adhocracy, respectively.


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Control mechanism Dominant part Structural form

Direct supervision strategic apex simple structure

Standardisation of work processes technostructure machine bureaucracy

Standardisation of outputs middle line divisionalised form

Standardisation of skills operating core professional bureaucracy

Mutual adjustment support staff adhocracy

Table 1: The five structural forms

Mintzberg's (1973) examination of the informational roles of the manager and

his view of the organisation as a system of information flows (1979), give a picture

of information in the organisation. Each of the above five basic configurations is

considered in turn.

The simple structure has direct, two-way information flows between the

operational employees and the strategic apex, with most of them being informal.

There is little need for a formal management information system because most of it

is in the mind of the senior management. With direct supervision being applicable to

all the operational employees, there is no need for formal communications.

Information gathering is elementary, with external regulators such as government

taxation and labour departments being driving forces. Any systems will be

centralised and functional.

The machine bureaucracy is appropriate for stable environments; when

nonroutine decisions need to be made or exceptions arise, they need to be

communicated up the hierarchy to someone with the level of authority to act. The

management information system is designed with that principle in mind. Summary

information also flows up to higher levels so that control can be exerted and

decisions can be made; which decisions in turn flow down the organisation


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(Mintzberg, 1979:342). If designed correctly, at each point in the hierarchy there is

sufficient authority to deal with the normal amount of variation, so that only

exceptions need to be passed on. However, in many cases, "normal" information is

passed up to senior levels, a common pattern of excessive reporting. The vertical,

both up and down, information flow is dominant but not the only one. There are

horizontal flows of design and control information between the technostructure and

the rest of the organisation (mainly the middle line) because it is the function of the

technostructure to design and control work. The third group of flows are the

information flows that follow the material flow and flow of work (Mintzberg, 1979:38),

which exist also in the simple structure and divisionalised form. If the organisation

only processes information, then the material flows are themselves information

flows.

Mintzberg characterises the divisionalised form as a collection of

organisational units, usually machine bureaucracies (Mintzberg, 1979:392), under

the supreme control of the headquarters strategic apex. Thus the apex of each of

the component divisions becomes the middle line in the overall organisation,

passing up performance information for the purpose of control. Within each division,

the information flows are those of a machine bureaucracy, except that the

information requirement of the apex has been designed and specified by the

technostructure at headquarters.

The managers there, with the aid of their own technostructure, set up

the system: they decide on the performance measures and reporting

periods, establish formats for plans and budgets, and design an MIS

to feed performance results back to headquarters. They then operate

the system, setting targets for each reporting period, perhaps jointly

with the divisional managers, and reviewing the MIS results.(Mintzberg, 1979:390)


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As an aside, this view gives clarity to the continuing debate (from Streeter,

1973; through Lucas, 1982; to Oppenheimer, 1991) in the IS field about

centralisation or decentralisation of the MIS department. Should the organisation

put its greatest investment in central computer resources or should the functional or

user departments have responsibility for their own computing? In Mintzberg's terms,

there must be a technostructure at headquarters involved in the design (and

building) of the performance control system used for assessing divisions, while each

division clearly needs authority to develop its own internal systems.

The professional bureaucracyis an organisation in which the standards used

by the operating core are determined by outside professional bodies. Thus the

technostructure does not develop a performance control system; the standards and

techniques of the operating core have been established in the professional code

and practice of their discipline. Each discipline has specialisations into which the

task must be pigeon-holed; standard sets of conditions enable a diagnosis followed

by a standard treatment pattern, learned during training. All the factors are in the

hands of the profession, not the technostructure. Mintzberg (1979:361) suggests

that a large, professional bureaucracy organisation will have a fully-developed

support staff, which may well be itself organised as a machine bureaucracy; thus

the technostructure can create MIS for the support staff rather than the operating

staff. There will remain information flows that follow the flow of work but they will

simply be enough to effect communication with the next professional in the chain,

such as in the medical referral; the next professional is expected to know what to

do.

The adhocracy has professionally trained staff, like the professional

bureaucracy, but they are organised in organic teams to try to solve new problems,such as reported by Burns and Stalker (1966) in the British electronics industry.


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Within the teams, which are usually project-based, will be managers and support

staff. Liaison groups will be widely used to effect coordination between groups, with

mutual adjustment used within the group. Formal IS that regulate and control are not

important:

The regulated system does not matter much either. In this structure,

information and decision processes flow flexibly and informally,

wherever they must to promote innovation. And that means overriding

the chain of command if needs be. (Mintzberg, 1979:473)

There are two variants of the adhocracy - the administrative adhocracy that is

concerned with problems belonging to the organisation itself, and the operating

adhocracy whose problems belong to outside clients or customers. Both the

administrative and operating adhocracies are decentralised such that control is

within the project teams, the manager being part of the team. There is no

organisation wide control system; each team has goals of its own.

The preceding sections demonstrate that the nature and role of information is

central to the study of organisations, and, just as emphatically, that the

organisational structure and managerial roles are critical ingredients in the

selection, analysis and design of IS. As a consequence, IS are implicitly associated

with organisational change, as Keen (1981) pointed out. Changes in the

organisation can be dealt with in an information model by examining the

organisational structure.

The organisational structure model of Mintzberg facilitates the understanding

of information in the organisation, particularly through its examination of the flows of

information, decisions and control. It is also amenable to empirical investigation.


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3. THE RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

In this section a hypothesis is developed by considering the impact of organisation

structure on IS using the theories of Mintzberg. The fundamental functioning of the

organisational structure is examined to attempt to define the generic information

system that would be appropriate for it. A set of contingency factors determines the

method of coordination (Mintzberg, 1979:286) and in turn determines the

organisational structure and the functioning of the organisation. The contingency

factors are:

the age and size of the firm,

the technical system,

the environment, and

the centre of power.

In terms of IT, the contingency factors that are most significant are the

technical system and the environment. The technical system refers to the means of

production, whether it is simple or sophisticated and whether the technology of

production controls the work of the operating core or not. Fully automated

production dispenses with the need for an operating core, while very simple

production technology (cooking hamburgers) is standardised. The organisation's

operating environment has four key attributes stability, simplicity, market diversity

and hostility:

Stability leads to predictability that in turn leads to standardisation;

Simplicity leads to rationalisation and the analysis of operational work

into easily comprehensible segments by the technostructure;

Increasing diversity of markets increases the range of work to be

done; and


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Hostility leads to unpredictability and the need for fast strategic

actions.

Furthermore, the interaction between the environment and the technical

system is concerned with the rate of change of the technical system (Mintzberg,

1979:250). The relationship between the environment, the technical systems and IT

is through the information content of the technical system and of the product, and

the rate of change of the applicable IT. That is, the four attributes of environment

and the two attributes of technical system are strongly related to IT.

Hypothesis MAD

The generic information system for the adhocracy is the network; local area

networks to support the small-size unit focused on a particular function or market,

and larger networks to facilitate liaison and coordination among larger groupings.

The networks mimic, supplement and support the human networks that are an

essential part of the adhocracy. The software on the network should vary

significantly, although there is a need for some transferability and transportability.

The criterion for selection of the software will be the extent to which it supports and

enhances the performance of the team; in other words, the software may have to be

regarded as another team member. Mintzberg identifies "non regulating and

unsophisticated technical systems" as the hallmark of the operating adhocracy. An

administrative adhocracy will have an information system incorporated in the

background production process; it may be as explicit information or as control and

monitoring information built into hardware devices.

4. METHODOLOGY

An in-depth investigation was carried out on the strategic business units of amultinational financial institution, referred to here as "Globalbank". It has pursued a


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policy of aggressively using IT as a strategic weapon with the aim of becoming more

successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Its practice of

decentralisation of business units has enabled those units to pursue strategies that

are almost independent, to such an extent that the business units can be regarded

as distinct entities with a small set of organisational constraints. Thus the internal

business units of Globalbank will serve as separate implementations of IT strategy,

as a large sample rather than just one of size one. In addition, through its innovation

and aggressive searching for IT opportunities, Globalbank can serve as a model for

other organisations. That is, if an organisation can be successful in the application

of IT, Globalbank has both had the opportunity and taken it.

Public IT strategy the historic drive for IT

Globalbank is seen by authoritative commentators as a leader in the application of

IT to banking, a position that it has held for many years. It adopted technology

leadership as a strategic move in order to become more successful. As an example

of its leadership, it introduced a communications network into its IT architecture long

before most of its competitors; it was a strategic move that indicated its aim to

expand the marketplace in which it operated. The establishment cost of the network

was very large, comparable to the costs experienced by dedicated communications

companies. The perception of strength is not only held externally but also internally;

for example, its annual reports repeatedly refer to IT as one of the strengths of the

organisation.

Globalbank has given great emphasis to IT over so long a period that the

impacts of IT on the business, if any, will have been felt. There have been

opportunities and encouragement to use IT to its greatest advantage. An IT

strategy, then, has been implemented. The IT strategy can be observed through its

implementation, and its effects and characteristics related to each other.


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Globalbank has many distinct business units, each of which has had

considerable freedom in determining its own IT strategies. They will be taken to be

a large sample of experimental units, or, more precisely, test cases. Globalbank has

an acknowledged position of leadership in its industry, particularly in the application

of IT for competitive advantage. Globalbank managers are expected to be

aggressive in using IT wherever it is beneficial in their domain. In such a setting

there is the opportunity to assess many possibly successful users of IT, to

determine whether the theories of Mintzberg suitably describe the information

strategy.

The generally smaller size of the business units makes it harder to see the

natural style of coordination. A business unit may look, at first sight, as if it is a

simple structure, just a small business. On closer inspection, the degree of

professionalism, specialisation, level of routine work and coordination with other

groups indicates another form of structure. In the case of Globalbank, the separate

business units vary greatly in size but only in the case of the major groupings, such

as Corporate, Consumer, and Private Banking, do the divisions resemble the

massive units analysed by Chandler (1962), Rumelt (1974) and others.

Data collection and validation

A schedule was established for interviewing managers of business units, using a

semi-structured questionnaire. Supplementary information sources included

computer system documentation, internal communications and external materials,

such as newspaper and journal articles. The sources are described in the following

sections.

Interviews

The principal data collection method was determined to be semi-structuredinterviews. The questionnaire is displayed in Appendix 1. Another aspect of the


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study concerned the alignment with the competitive strategy of the business unit, so

the questionnaire contains many items under this heading. The questionnaire was a

compilation from many sources including Feeny et al. (1989), Mintzberg (1979,

1983, 1988), Porter (1980, 1985), Porter and Millar (1985), Davis and Olson (1985),

Lucas (1986) and Dickson and Wetherbe (1985). The questionnaire was designed

to be directly administered by the interviewer. Questions raised in one interview

could be presented to another manager in a later interview.

The interview subjects were the managers of the various business units and,

when applicable, the managers of the business groups. In a few cases where

operating processes were unclear or unusual, junior staff were consulted for

explanation. Those staff were not targets for the questionnaire, which was aimed at

managers making recommendations for IS facilities to support their business

strategy. The sequence of business units investigated was customer-oriented units

and then product-oriented units. The two groups had only recently been merged into

a single entity, and had some historical differences. It was decided to see all the

customer-oriented units before approaching the others. At that time most of

customer-oriented units were in a different building to the product-oriented units

which made it also physically convenient to deal with them sequentially. After all the

business units had been examined, the most senior managers were interviewed.

Internal documentation

A wide variety of documents originating from inside Globalbank in Hong Kong was

collected. It included IS documentation, ISSP documents, minutes of working

meetings, inter-office memos, and formal reports dealing with IS. In addition, wider

organisational material included organisation charts, standard business forms,

internal publicity, recruitment and induction handouts, newsletters and company

magazines.


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External documentation

As Globalbank is a major international organisation, references to it are frequently

to be found in public media. A collection was made of newspaper reports and

journal articles referring to Globalbank, especially from the South China Morning

Post, which often had articles referring to the same major issues that had been

revealed earlier in interviews. The newspaper was also a source for advertisements

for Globalbank's services and for recruitment of staff. Major references were found

in books, although they seldom referred to activity in Hong Kong. Similarly there

were regular references in such sources as The Economistand Business Week. In

addition to the more journalistic articles, there were highly formalised public

documents such as annual reports to shareholders, returns to statutory authorities,

and invitations to participate in financial instruments and share issues.

Summary Data collection and validation

Very large quantities of data were collected from a variety of sources. Interviews

with business managers were the focal point, where questions covered the business

unit structure, its competitive strategy and the role for IT. Responses were

corroborated by reference to other informants and other documentary information

sources. Regular literature searches, scans of contemporary journalism, and

internal Globalbank documentation were the main supporting sources.

5. THE STRUCTURE AND ORGANISATION OF GLOBALBANK

Globalbank's main activities in Hong Kong are corporate, consumer and private

banking. Corporate banking customers include businesses, government

departments and other banks. Each of the businesses reports to its own superiors

at head office directly. Within each country, including Hong Kong, a committee

coordinates certain activities and ensures that local legal requirements are met.However, the organisational structure is not hierarchical, it is a matrix based upon


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customers, products and geography. Thus, in the "geography" dimension, each

business also reports to a regional group, which in turn reports to head office. The

product dimension of the structure becomes most apparent when looking within a

business area. Although corporate banking customers are subdivided into smaller

customer groups, there are product teams dedicated to providing and managing

certain products, whichever customer is using them. The product teams may well

cut across the boundaries between corporate, consumer and private banking.

Product teams also have a reporting path to head office.

The effect of this structural arrangement is to break down Globalbank into

many smaller businesses, each responsible for a small group of customers,

products or geographical territories. It is described by Gonzalez and Mintzberg

(1991) as the 'related diversifier' or 'shotgun' strategy, where a financial institution

enters many business segments, with only loose links between them. A senior

Globalbank headquarters executive describes it as a key strength, because the

small business units are all available for expansion. The manager of each of the

businesses will have the job of achieving the best performance for the unit, in

cooperation with others. There are many committees and other opportunities for

coordination and liaison between units. Further complication is added because the

manager of one unit may well have responsibilities in another area and because the

individual's set of responsibilities frequently change. Each of the individual business

units has been able to develop in its own way, within the general constraints posed

by the organisation.

The actual area of study is the Hong Kong corporate banking business,

Corporate Banking Hong Kong (CBHK). Note - generic names will be used for

business units and groups. Through decentralisation each unit in this business has

had considerable freedom and opportunity to develop the IT that it needs. Bystudying the nature of each unit's activities and its use of IT, we can examine


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various implementations of a single corporate policy. In this paper only those units

that were found to be adhocratic in structure are reported. Those that are customer-

oriented, shown in Table 2, and those that are product-oriented, shown in Table 3.

Unit Code Main Customers Typical Products

World Corporate Group WCG Multinationals Many

Corporate Banking Unit CBU Major local companies Many

China CHINA Joint ventures Many

Table 2: A summary of the customer-oriented business units

Unit Code Main customers Products

Treasury Marketing TM Many Money market, FX

Corporate Finance Unit CFU Middle size manufacturers Corporate equity

Project Finance Unit PFU Large organisations Capital project finance

Institutional Investment Mgt IIM Large organisations Pension funds

Tax Management Unit TMU Multinationals Tax management

Table 3: A summary of the product-oriented business units

IT services in the Asia-Pacific region

The organisation of IT service provision mirrors the business units. The corporate,

consumer and private banking organisations have their own IT services groups, and

there is a regional group (Asia Pacific IT, APIT) which can support any unit, country

or product. CBHK's IT group (ITG) carries out some systems development for APIT,

and vice versa. Any unit in CBHK must seek the assistance of ITG for any of its IT

requirements. If they are not provided directly by either APIT or ITG, one of these

units will manage the project and ensure that it meets corporate standards and fits

into the existing systems. However, to a great extent it is the responsibility of the


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business unit to determine its own IT requirements and to decide on the amount of

funds that may be allocated to new systems. It reinforces the notion of the

decentralised business units being independent decision makers.

6. ANALYSIS

Extended case descriptions for the units, including their IT functions, are available

from the author by mail or electronic mail. Differences from the hypothesised forms

need to be understood, either as "random" variation, reasonably insignificant

differences, or as differences caused by some other factor that was not part of the

experiment, or as faults in the hypothesis.

The adhocracy

There are thus eight business units classified as adhocracies:

World Corporate Group, WCG, Corporate Banking Unit, CBU,

China customers, Institutional Investment Management, IIM,

Tax Management Unit, TMU, Project Finance Unit, PFU,

Treasury Marketing, TM, Corporate Finance Unit, CFU.

They are all operating adhocracies that deal with customers' problems. In all units

professional staff are employed who use their skills more on unique cases or

projects than on routine action, although there is some routine in all of their work.

There is much dealing with other professional or expert staff in different domains of

expertise. Creativity, originality and the ability to coordinate with other disciplines

are key attributes for staff in these areas. Standard professional skills are used in all

areas but a variation is found in WCG where Globalbank has created its own

profession of the WCG specialist. They are only interchangeable with WCG

specialists from other countries.


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CBU and China are concerned with setting up business, while TM even has a

transaction processing function in the unit. All units are concerned with the design

and/or the marketing of products. CBU creates management information for its own

use. There is little use of IT to directly support staff activities beyond the use of PCs

to model alternative proposals. The Globalbank electronic mail network is used in

all units to work with people in other locations. It is critical to the success of WCG,

TMU, PFU and the China unit. The existence of an international telecommunications

network permits the processing that WCG and the China unit bring to market.

Specific software that enhances the functioning of the staff in used in TMU, IIM and

TM, with the most sophisticated software used by any of the groups being in TMU.

General purpose software, such as PC packages, is used for enhanced

performance of PFU, CFU and WCG. Because CFU's networks extend outside

Globalbank, a cellular telephone is used, one of the few used by any business unit.

The Mintzberg hypothesis, MAD, is supported but it gives little explanation of the

differences between the IT developments in the units. The strongest support for

MAD is given in the China unit, WCG, PFU, CFU and TMU.

Results

Overall then, MAD was not so well received. It is perhaps indicative of the

competitive, dynamic and evolving nature of banking in the present era, that eight

business units (out of 25) were found to be operating as adhocracies. None of the

units rejected MAD, but the degree of support was seldom strong. Part of the weak

support may be attributable to the paucity of specific testable statements in MAD.

Apart from the notion of networking and interaction with other experts, there are few

concrete statements. End-user computing (Arkush and Stanton, 1987) was

observed to be an important ingredient in the adhocracy. MAD was insufficiently

authoritative to carry out robust testing. It gave a flavour of the information

processing in an adhocracy but was very light on details, except for the concept ofnetworking. End-user computing was highly developed in the adhocracies, and in


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different ways in different units, but the hypothesis makes no proposals that could

be tested.

7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The general problem for an organisation to decide in which areas to develop IS and

IT may be approached through ISSP. A body of knowledge and experience

suggests that the best information strategy depends on many organisational and

environmental factors. The alignment of IS strategy with the business needs has

been an important issue to many organisations in their adoption of ISSP. The

starting point of this investigation is that the business need must be moderated by

the organisational structure in order to best determine the IS strategy.

The existing literature in IS development is particularly concerned with the

problems of big business and the design of IS to suit their needs. Most such

organisations would be classified as machine bureaucracies or divisionalised

forms. Elsewhere in the study (Jordan, 1993) we have found that their generic IS

descriptions suggested by Mintzberg are strongly supported. Similarly, the

professional bureaucracies follow the hypothesised descriptions well, although

there is significant variation among them. Units organised as simple structures are

not so simple as theory suggests. The many reasons that may be behind the

adoption of the simple structure form lead to major differences in IS needs. For such

units, conclusive results have not been found beyond the inadequacy of existing

theories.

However, we have found that simply considering Mintzberg's theory is

insufficient to deal with a form of organisational structure that is becoming more

common, the adhocracy. Our results show that this organically functioning, creative

business unit benefits from a wide variety of information technologies, most


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particularly networks and small systems and models developed by the users end-

user computing.

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APPENDIX 1 - Structured Interview Questionnaire

STRUCTURE

Questions to determine structure category:

Key coordination mechanisms?

direct supervision, standardisation (work, skills, outputs) or mutual

adjustment

Specific questions about all of Mintzberg's design parameters

specialisation of jobs

training and indoctrination

formalisation of behaviour

planning and control systems

liaison devices

decentralisation

Contingency factors affecting design

age

size

technical systems

environment

power

Check questions to verify that deduction is correct:

Actual functioning in 5 parts

characteristics of fundamental flows and work constellations

response to tentative deduction

Questions relating to other organisational structure theories:

Checking limit of applicability


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MARKETING POSITION AND STRATEGY

Questions to determine competitive strategy:

What is industry in which they operate?

Is it one market or many?

Specific questions about industry forces

Strength of force from:

competitors

entry barriers

customers

suppliers

substitute products

Questions to verify that tentative deduction is correct:

Response to tentative deduction

market position statistics

market share data

Questions relating to alternative theories:

Limits of applicability


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INFORMATION SYSTEMS

IS DEFINITION

IS department organisation (staffing, groups, reporting, ...)

Hardware installed and planned, value

Software installed and planned, dates,

User participation

Tools, techniques, methodologies

Performance measures used

IS STRATEGY

Explicit strategy?

People and processes for determining the strategy

Review mechanism and timing

Scope of strategy statement

hardware

software

priorities

etc.

Perceived importance of this strategy within IS function

Perceived importance of this strategy outside IS function

ALIGNMENT OF IS STRATEGY AND BUSINESS STRATEGY

Examples of strategic advantage?

Examples relating directly to market forces

These examples - what percentage of total IS resource used?

Project justification process used


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PERCEIVED CONTRIBUTION OF IS TO ORGANISATION'S SUCCESS

Is the organisation seen as successful?

How is this determined?

How does IS contribute?

By IS manager

By CEO

IS SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats

What are IS department's strengths?

What are IS department's weaknesses?

What opportunities exist with new technology now available?

Other opportunities?

What threats exist with new technology now available?

Other threats?

Information Strategy in Adhocratic Businesses

Documents