IT Executives Research Articles

Achieving IT‐based synergies through regulation‐oriented and consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities

AbstractThis study aims at exploring the IT governance capabilities that enable organizations to achieve IT‐based synergies. Following existing work on the contextualization of theories and drawing on the resource‐based view of the firm (RBV), we develop an RBV of IT‐based synergies in two steps. First, we adopt existing context‐specific constructs and relationships from prior work on IT governance capabilities, IT relatedness, and synergies to develop a preliminary contextualization of the RBV. Second, to further refine our theoretical framework, we conduct an exploratory field study that includes interviews with 26 CIOs and other IT executives from 21 multibusiness firms. Our findings suggest that IT governance capabilities lead to IT‐based synergies through IT relatedness and business process relatedness. We found regulation‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT roles and IT processes) to increase IT relatedness, while consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT groups and relational capabilities) had a positive effect on business process relatedness. Our results suggest that, in isolation, IT and business process relatedness lead to IT cost synergies, while collectively enabling IT‐induced business synergies. Our study is among the first to treat IT relatedness as an endogenous construct and to explicitly integrate business process relatedness into the IT governance domain. Our context‐specific decomposition of IT governance capabilities helps to better explain their links to IT and business process relatedness. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the tension between IT‐based synergies and business‐IT alignment. Decision‐makers are guided in developing IT governance capabilities to achieve IT‐based synergies.

An architectural approach to IT–business alignment

Pavel V. Malyzhenkov - Associate Professor, Department of Information Systems and Technologies, National Research University Higher School of Economics Address: 25/12, Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, Nizhniy Novgorod, 603155, Russian Federation E-mail: pmalyzhenkov@hse.ruMarina I. Ivanova - Student, Business Informatics MSc Program, National Research University Higher School of Economics Address: 25/12, Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, Nizhniy Novgorod, 603155, Russian Federation E-mail: miivanova_1@edu.hse.ru Information technologies have evolved from their traditional back-office role to a strategic resource role that can not only support but also shape business strategies. Still, different analytical sources indicate that only a small number of projects complete on-time and on-budget, leading to initially specified goals and results. The main problem is the creation and formalization of an IT-business alignment mechanism which for over a decade has been ranked as a top-priority management concern and is widely covered in theoretical literature. However, the field is dominated by conceptual studies, while there is little research on practical ways to achieve the alignment. Moreover, most of the existing research focuses on the alignment assessment using questionnaire methods based on the subjective judgement of IT and business executives. From this point of view, Enterprise Architecture development as a methodological approach to the mutually aligned business and IT architectures’ design, represents a suitable tool for solving this problem. However, most of the existing EA approaches do not distinguish between different IT-business alignment perspectives. This paper attempts to provide practical guidance for IT-business alignment as well as strategic guidance for EA development by integrating the traditional Strategic Alignment Model and the TOGAF framework.

Interpersonal Conflict and Turnover Intention: The Mediating Role of Psychological Well-Being

The purpose of the study is to examine the direct effect of interpersonal conflict on turnover intention and indirect effect of psychological well-being between interpersonal conflict and turnover intention. The data was collected from IT executives working in Malaysian Software companies (n = 396). PLS-SEM technique was used to test the research model. The results of the study indicate that interpersonal conflict positively affects turnover intention while psychological well-being mediates the relationship between interpersonal conflict and turnover intention. The results revealed that the intervention of psychological well-being at workplace help to minimize the turnover intention of IT executives. Additionally, these findings might help IT practitioners to design psychological well-being policy to retain employees. This study establishes a noteworthy gap in the literature to find a mediation link of psychological well-being between interpersonal conflict and turnover intention. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.

Job Stress, Social Anxiety and Social Skills in Male and Female I.T. Executives

The present study was conducted to investigate the gender difference in job stress, social anxiety and social skills between male and female IT executives. A total sample of 200 I.T. executives (100 males and 100 females) was taken from the private I.T. companies of Gurgaon and Faridabad. Job Stress Survey (Spielberger and Vagg, 1999), Social Skills Scale (Albert, 2005) and Social Anxiety Scale (Liebowitz, 2004) were administered to measure these variables. Data was analyzed by using t-test. Results clearly revealed the significant gender differences in the above measures. Job stress and social anxiety were found high in males while females had better social skills than male IT executives.

Socio-Technical Punctuated Equilibrium Model Enhanced with Social Network Theory

We investigate the equilibria of CIO work. We apply the punctuated equilibrium paradigm based socio-technical model as our theoretical basis. We use this model to visually describe the impacts of business interruptions (=punctuations) on IT executives' perceived equilibria of work. We enhance the punctuated model with constructs taken from Granovetter's social network theory to better understand social mechanisms influencing IT executives' perceptions. We examined empirically perceptions about the equilibria of work and the role of IT in business in a media company during the years 2010-16. We collected data with the interview data collection method by conducting several interview rounds. Interview findings revealed that the equilibria of work were seen differently at three organizational levels. Also, the role of IT in business and the responsibilities of IT functions were seen in varied ways. The punctuated socio-technical equilibrium model together with the constructs of Granovetter's social network theory offered insightful theoretical explanations for our findings.

How to Become a Strategist CIO

The strategist CIO is one type of top information system or IT executive. Strategists can exploit the use of information systems and technologies by participating in business strategy formulation. Scholars and practitioners have described the strategist CIO as the ideal type for today's organizations and globalized challenges, but little information exists on how to become a strategist CIO. This article describes the main features of strategist CIOs and explains how some CIOs have succeeded in becoming strategists.

RECURSOS DE TECNOLOGIA DA INFORMAÇÃO: MODO DE EMPREGO E CARÁTER ESTRATÉGICO

This work searched elements in the literature to connect the IT resources, usage modes and exploitation, exploration e ambidextrous strategic characters through the analyses of the IT routines. Once the connections were established, an exploratory research were conducted within 17 companies based on IT executives’ interviews, with the objective of contribute to the discussion about how IT resources are being used at major Brazilian companies and about strategic character these different usage forms assume. At the end of this investigation, it was possible to catch a glimpse of IT resource use and strategic character at the researched companies.

Mutual Understanding Determinants for Effective Communication in Business and IT Strategic Alignment Planning

Business and IT strategic alignment is continuously explored from different facets motivated by the demands for organisation to be well aligned in its business and IT strategies for business continuity. The management aspect rather than technological issues often causes misalignment in business and IT strategies more significantly. One of the issues is the communication ineffectiveness between business and IT people involved in planning the business and IT strategic alignment. Difficulty to achieve mutual understanding between these two teams is a critical problem in communication and hinders the successful alignment. Therefore, a set of determinants for mutual understanding is proposed. Extensive analysis on literature has been carried out to identify and define the determining factors. The review can serve as a reference for business and IT executives to improve in their communication effectiveness towards achieving well aligned business and IT strategic alignment.

Managing legacy system costs: A case study of a meta-assessment model to identify solutions in a large financial services company

Financial services organisations spend a significant amount of their IT budgets maintaining legacy systems. This paper identifies the characteristics of legacy systems and explores why such systems are so costly to maintain and support. Three models for the assessment and management of legacy system costs are examined and a new meta-model that addresses differences between the existing models is proposed. The new meta-model is then applied to a large UK financial services company - FinCo. Input data for the new meta-model are provided by the company’s senior business and IT executives and the results compared with the firm’s actual legacy system management plans. The paper concludes by identifying improvements the company should make to these current legacy system management plans and its longer-term strategy for managing legacy systems.

Influence of Shadow IT on Innovation in Organizations

Shadow IT is relatively new and emerging phenomenon which is bringing number of concerns and risks to the organizational security. Past literature has mostly explored the “negative” effects of the Shadow IT phenomenon, including, for example, the security aspect where Shadow systems are said to undermine the official systems and endanger organizational data flows. However, the question of how Shadow IT can contribute to leverage user’s innovation has not been adequately addressed. We used three methods to understand if Shadow IT can be an important source of innovation for firms: 1) Single case study with international firm that adopted Shadow IT; 2) Interviews with 15 IT executives and 3) Focus group using twitter as enabling tool to interact with 65 IT professionals. We offer a new perspective on how Shadow IT practices can leverage user’s innovation. The study offers novel insights on the role of Shadow users in the organizational innovation process and how they contribute to new innovations by using Shadow IT. Not only this user led innovation through Shadow IT brings positive outcomes for the employee, but it also reveals the path to follow for organizations to increase their innovation capabilities.

Investigating the structural linkage between IT capability and organizational agility

Purpose Information technology (IT) is normally regarded as an enabling factor for making firms agile. Usually, it has been realized that greater IT spending enhances a firm’s agility. However, the role of IT as an obstructing factor towards organizational agility cannot be overlooked. Taking this commonly perceived but less-studied IT-agility contradiction into account, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether IT can augment or impede organizational agility. This research which is conducted in context to privately owned Indian financial enterprises proposes the premise that effective IT resource management is imperative for organizations to thrive for greater firm-wide IT capability for enhanced agility. Design/methodology/approach Primary data collected from 300 business and IT executives working in various privately owned financial enterprises across India are used for this study and a structural equation modelling is employed to assess the IT-agility link. Findings The findings of the study are two-folded. First, this study concludes that IT capability acts as an enabler for business process and market responsive organizational agility. Second, if IT spending is not properly translated into creating superior capability, huge and impudent IT investments will impede the overall organizational agility. Originality/value This paper investigates both exogenous variable (IT capability) and endogenous variable (organizational agility) in terms of second-order reflective measures and establishes a significant structural link between both the dimensions of IT capability (managerial and technical) and organizational agility (business process and market responsive). This analysis illustrates the moderating effect of IT spending on each of these relationships, thereby greatly contributes and extends the existing IT capability-agility related information systems literature.

Business Process and Information Technology Alignment: Construct Conceptualization, Empirical Illustration, and Directions for Future Research

Since strategic alignment first rose to prominence with Henderson and Venkatraman’s (1993) seminal paper, research has tended to focus on the extent of fit between IT and business strategy at the firm level. Although useful, a firm-level view of alignment could mask what firms are doing to realize intellectual alignment between business and IT strategy and whether their actions will likely succeed. In this study, we build on an emergent stream of research that considers alignment between IT and business strategy at the process level. Since research tends to view this form of alignment through the lens of IT support for business strategy, this perspective fails to account for how IT can enable the development of new business strategies. Accordingly, we conceptualize alignment between IT and business strategy at the process level using the lens of IT shortfall (a lack of IT support for business activities) and IT slack (having more IT than needed to support current business activities). Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives at 317 U.S. and E.U. firms, we illustrate the value of this conceptualization and its process measures. Our results show that IT shortfall is negatively correlated with IT business value, while IT slack is positively correlated with IT business value. We further note that the existence of IT shortfall and IT slack depends on differences in firms’ chosen business strategy and whether a process is critical or non-critical to that strategy’s success.

Assessing business value of Big Data Analytics in European firms

In the strategic management field, dynamic capabilities (DC) such as organizational agility are considered to be paramount in the search for competitive advantage. Recent research claims that IT business value research needs a more dynamic perspective. In particular, the Big Data Analytics (BDA) value chain remains unexplored. To assess BDA value, a conceptual model is proposed based on a knowledge-based view and DC theories. To empirically test this model, the study addresses a survey to a wide range of 500 European firms and their IT and business executives. Results show that BDA can provide business value to several stages of the value chain. BDA can create organizational agility through knowledge management and its impact on process and competitive advantage. Also, this paper demonstrates that agility can partially mediate the effect between knowledge assets and performance (process level and competitive advantage). The model explains 77.8% of the variation in competitive advantage. The current paper also presents theoretical and practical implications of this study, and the study's limitations.

Intention to Quit and the Demand Control Model: A Case of Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor Status Companies

In the fast paced global economy where trades are being conducted everywhere and at any time, the focus of organizations has shifted from the traditional view of producing what they think are needed by the market to a new paradigm whereby they are now to produce products or services that the markets desire literally. One requirement of surviving in such challenging business environment is to be able to retain performing employees whereby employee loyalty has been a thing of the past. This study will look into three critical factors that are often associated with unwelcome behaviors in the organizations such as low motivation, low organizational commitment, less satisfaction which in turn will lead to lower productivity, creativity and innovations and may result in employees quitting. The main objectives of this particular study are to explore the degree of intention to quit, examine relationships between job demands; job control; social support with turnover intention; also to examine the ability of the demand control variables (Karasek, 1979) in explaining turnover intention among IT executives. The sector which is being investigated is the small and medium companies which operate in the IT related businesses particularly Small and Medium companies in Malaysia. Results showed that only job demand and job control have significant associations with turnover intention and subsequently the demand control model is unable to explain the variances in turnover intention. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n2p217

Influential it Management Trends: An International Study

This paper is based on data collected as part of an 11-year authors’ survey research on IT trends in different geographic regions, including North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Latin America. This study focuses on global similarities and differences in technology trends (e.g., management concerns, influential technologies, budgets/spending, organizational considerations) among geographies to gain insight into the challenges that IT and non-IT executives face today as well as provide an understanding of the impact these technologies have on the organization's long-term plans and investments. The results for the 11-year period show that the top five management concerns are: (i) IT-business alignment; (ii) business agility; (iii) business cost reduction/controls; (iv) business productivity; and (v) security/privacy. The five most influential technologies are: (i) analytics/business intelligence; (ii) cloud computing; (iii) ERP systems; (iv) CRM systems; and (v) security technologies. Taken together, these findings suggest that the alignment of IT and the business and leveraging IT to reduce business expenses and generate revenue are and will remain essential. The results also suggest that the role of the CIO is evolving and offshore outsourcing is on the rise. Budgets, hiring, and salaries are also increasing, albeit cautiously. This research provides important implications for IT managers to benchmark considerations such as organizational, sourcing, spending, issues/concerns, and technologies across geographies, and sheds light on a perspective on leveraging important IT trends to make thoughtful decisions about them over the coming years, and address current business challenges.

Strategising IT service management through ITIL implementation: model and empirical test

Research on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) lacks appropriate theories and models that capture the distinct characteristics and implications of the ITIL implementation practice. The purpose of this study is to close this gap. Based on a literature review, we develop and empirically validate a theoretical model: the ITIL Implementation Project Model. The model includes significant antecedents, which provide a foundation upon which an effective ITIL implementation project can be built, as well as the pertinent effects of implementing ITIL. The results contribute to the current research stream on the strategising of IT service management as well as to an improved understanding of the IT function in organisations. The model provides IT executives with practices for improving ITIL implementation quality and for assessing the benefits of their efforts.

Shadow it Steroids for Innovation

Shadow IT is relatively new and emerging phenomenon which is bringing number of concerns and risks to the organizational security. Past literature has mostly explored the “negative” effects of the Shadow IT phenomenon, including, for example, the security aspect where Shadow systems are said to undermine the official systems and endanger organizational data flows. But, they are also said to increase innovation. However, the current literature does not provide any evidence of a possible innovation increase. We used three methods to understand if Shadow IT can be an important source of innovation for firms: 1) Single case study with international firm that adopted Shadow IT; 2) Interviews with 15 IT executives and 3) Focus group using twitter as enabling tool to interact with 65 IT professionals. Our study reveals that Shadow IT can be an important source of Innovation for organizations. Finally, our research brings new theoretical contributions for researchers and important insights for practitioners. We also provide limitation and future directions for research.

Psychometric Evaluation of BRT-13B: A Shorter Version of the Benchmark Resilience Tool

The Indian IT Industry is operating in an era of risk and instability. Success and survival in this uncertain environment demands the organizations to be resilient, which is not about responding to one time crisis. It is about continuously anticipating and adjusting to change. Research reveals that an organization having resilient people, systems, and processes can adjust to meeting the varying needs of its market with more confidence, making it essential to have an organization centric measure of resilience. Despite the growing importance of the concept, there are only few reliable and valid instruments available in the literature, and most importantly, none of the available instruments have been used to measure the resilience capacity of IT organizations. Keeping this gap in mind, this study evaluated the factor structure and psychometric properties of the recently developed, a shorter version of Benchmark Resilience Tool (BRT-13B) by considering a sample of Indian IT executives. An empirical research was conducted by considering 160 employees of 12 information technology firms located in few select states of Northern India and registered with NASSCOM. The data were collected using 13 items, BRT-13B scale. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the original two-factor structure. In this study, 75.537 % of the variance was jointly explained by the two factors (Planning and Adaptive Capacity). The results supported the dimensionality, reliability (α=0.888) and validity of the BRT-13 B instrument for measuring the IT executives' resilience.

Psychometric Evaluation of BRT-13B: A Shorter Version of the Benchmark Resilience Tool

The Indian IT Industry is operating in an era of risk and instability. Success and survival in this uncertain environment demands the organizations to be resilient, which is not about responding to one time crisis. It is about continuously anticipating and adjusting to change. Research reveals that an organization having resilient people, systems, and processes can adjust to meeting the varying needs of its market with more confidence, making it essential to have an organization centric measure of resilience. Despite the growing importance of the concept, there are only few reliable and valid instruments available in the literature, and most importantly, none of the available instruments have been used to measure the resilience capacity of IT organizations. Keeping this gap in mind, this study evaluated the factor structure and psychometric properties of the recently developed, a shorter version of Benchmark Resilience Tool (BRT-13B) by considering a sample of Indian IT executives. An empirical research was conducted by considering 160 employees of 12 information technology firms located in few select states of Northern India and registered with NASSCOM. The data were collected using 13 items, BRT-13B scale. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the original two-factor structure. In this study, 75.537 % of the variance was jointly explained by the two factors (Planning and Adaptive Capacity). The results supported the dimensionality, reliability (α=0.888) and validity of the BRT-13 B instrument for measuring the IT executives' resilience.

How Information Technology Governance Mechanisms and Strategic Alignment Influence Organizational Performance: Insights from a Matched Survey of Business and IT Managers

Previous research has proposed different types for and contingency factors affecting information technology governance. Yet, in spite of this valuable work, it is still unclear through what mechanisms IT governance affects organizational performance. We make a detailed argument for the mediation of strategic alignment in this process. Strategic alignment remains a top priority for business and IT executives, but theory-based empirical research on the relative importance of the factors affecting strategic alignment is still lagging. By consolidating strategic alignment and IT governance models, this research proposes a nomological model showing how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms. Our research model draws upon the resource-based view of the firm and provides guidance on how strategic alignment can mediate the effectiveness of IT governance on organizational performance. As such, it contributes to the knowledge bases of both alignment and IT governance literatures. Using dyadic data collected from 131 Taiwanese companies (cross-validated with archival data from 72 firms), we uncover a positive, significant, and impactful linkage between IT governance mechanisms and strategic alignment and, further, between strategic alignment and organizational performance. We also show that the effect of IT governance mechanisms on organizational performance is fully mediated by strategic alignment. Besides making contributions to construct and measure items in this domain, this research contributes to the theory base by integrating and extending the literature on IT governance and strategic alignment, both of which have long been recognized as critical for achieving organizational goals.