Реферат: Strategic Information Systems Essay Research Paper The

(Scott Morton 1991)

The nature of business governance is conceptualised along a continuum from loosely-coupled (arm’s-length, standard relationships like the classic open-market transactions, with relatively low cost to switch from one participant to another) through to tightly-coupled (unique, specialised relationships with high switching costs). The specific mode of functioning is dictated by the nature of the product, of its exchange and of its criticality, which are dictated by the business strategic thrusts and are independent of the IT.

The nature of IT governance ranges from a common role (i.e. the position occupied by any given player is no different from the position occupied by other player in the network, as in the case of adoption of a common EDI standard) to a unique role (e.g. the positions occupied by the different players are different because of their use of a dedicated, proprietary network, or their offering of specialised, valued-added software or other services on the standard communications network). These two dimensions, which resemble the inter-relatedness and exploitability considerations discussed earlier, are summarised in Exhibits 8 and 9.

Exhibit 8: Scott Morton’s Classification of Governance Modes

(Scott Morton 1991)

Cooperative Supra-Organisational Systems

The original orientation of SIS was towards internal systems. Subsequently, attention switched to cooperation among enterprises. Cooperation may take place along the industry value-chain, across industry segments, or between industries. Cooperation may be relatively informal, situational or short-term in nature and based on mutual understanding, or it may take the shape of a more formalised joint venture or alliance.

Cooperation and alliances are fundamentally competitive in nature, in that teams of corporations with at least some degree of common interest seek to gain an advantage over, or neutralise the advantage of, a single enterprise or another team of cooperating or allied enterprises.

Exhibit 9: Nature of Scott Morton’s IT-Induced Reconfiguration

(Scott Morton 1991)

Level Theme Potential impacts Major objectives Management

implications

One Localised Potentially high Reduced costs Identify

exploitation savings in and/or improved firm-specific

narrow areas of service areas for

business exploitation

Two Internal Integration Elevate IT as a Articulate the

integration offers both strategic resource logic for

efficiency and integration

effectiveness

Three Business Powerful in Reengineer the Strategy – IT

process creating business with IT alignment

redesign differential lever

capabilities in

the marketplace

Four Business Opportunities Create a virtual Articulate the

network for creatively organisation and logic of

redesign exploiting occupy a central network

capabilities position in the redesign for