Where’s the competitive advantage in strategic information systems research? Making the case for boundary-spanning research based on the German business and information systems engineering tradition

This chapter describes three critically important features for the planning, sustainability and implementation of strategic information systems (SIS). The literature identifies a consistent lack of success by organisations in achieving business benefits from their SIS investments and in particular the difficulties of obtaining a sustained competitive advantage over rivals. There appears to be little evidence that this record has improved as organisations increasingly rely on SIS to support their business strategy. The chapter focuses upon the need for appropriate SIS planning, the role of unique, causally ambiguous ‘isolating mechanisms’ in order to sustain SIS-derived competitive advantages and concludes by summarising the implementation factors deemed to be of real practical importance for the success of large-scale SIS projects based upon recent empirical research. The high failure rate of SIS applications in business is deemed to be largely of a managerial rather than a technical causation (Earl, 1989;Burn, 1993; Galliers et al., 1994;Barnett and Burgelman, 1996; Powell and Dent-Micallef 1997; Willcocks and Lester 1999; Watson et al., 2000). This chapter identifies and considers three components which are critical in this respect to enable an IT strategy fusion with the rest of the business (Papp, 1998).

Download Full-text

Sustainability of Strategic Information Systems in Emergent vs. Prescriptive Strategic Management

International Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence ◽

10.4018/ijoci.2015100101 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 1-7 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Amin Hosseinian-Far ◽

Victor Chang

Keyword(s):

Information Systems ◽

Strategic Management ◽

Competitive Advantage ◽

Business Processes ◽

Strategic Information ◽

Strategic Information Systems ◽

Management Approaches

Since the introduction of the ‘Strategic Information Systems' (SIS) concept by Wiseman in 1985, there have been numerous efforts in incorporation of such systems by businesses for the very main reason of gaining competitive advantage. Considering the broad categorization of Strategic Management into emergent and prescriptive types, integration of SIS into business processes seems to be dissimilar in these two categories. This paper initially outlines the phases in the two types of strategic management approaches. It then intends to produce a framework for integration of SIS in each of the two methods. Lastly, the sustainability of SIS in emergent and prescriptive strategic management is compared. Our points of views on the Modern SIS have been presented.

Download Full-text

Theories for Investigations

Advances in Business Information Systems and Analytics - Strategic Utilization of Information Systems in Small Business ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-8708-0.ch004 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 109-135

Keyword(s):

Information Systems ◽

Small Business ◽

Competitive Advantage ◽

Technology Acceptance ◽

New Technologies ◽

Punctuated Equilibrium Theory ◽

Business Transformation ◽

Systems Research ◽

Information Systems Research ◽

Acceptance Model

While there are many theories about information systems and also about small business, there are few that relate to both topics. Some theories relate information systems to business in general, but not to small business specifically. Research in this area is becoming more rigorous. One helpful approach has been to map information systems research in small business onto the Stages Theory of Small business. Other research has employed Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. The result is the development of frameworks to facilitate investigations. These frameworks support the contention that new technologies may facilitate business transformation which, in turn, may improve performance and contribute to competitive advantage. This chapter presents general theories, including models and frameworks, about small business and investigations related to information systems. Then a series of overviews describe approaches to information systems and small business. These overviews are presented in more detail in subsequent chapters in this section of the book.

Download Full-text