Key IT Research Articles

What are information technology's key qualifications?

What kind of IT key qualifications do we have to teach in order to lessen the digital divide between educated and uneducated IT users, and to enable students who live in an IT-rich world to gain insights into the underlying science? In this paper we argue that key qualifications, IT skills, and IT or media literacy can not be reduced to the teaching of applicational aspects, that is, to the functional characteristics of the IT systems in question. Instead, IT key qualifications consist in knowledge about the concepts of computer science. Applying the concept of educational lenses (described in previous papers) to a course on IT key qualifications, we are able to obtain a more focused approach towards a definition of IT skills.

IT security metrics: implementation and standards compliance

Like all business disciplines, IT systems and security policies develop and mature over time. As threat levels increase and the need for corporate compliance in this area grows, IT systems and security become vital to a company's overall business strategy. Current corporate-level interest in IT security is demonstrated by the fact that senior management and board level executives are increasingly being made responsible for implementing and managing key IT security systems and policies.

Factors Affecting the Buy vs Build Decision in Large Australian Organisations

When developing an information system, organisations are faced with a fundamental choice: to buy a pre-developed package (potentially customise it or redesign/reengineer the business processes of the company concerned to fit the package), or to build the system in-house. Past literature has indicated the importance of the buy vs build decision to the organisation even suggesting that correctly managing the choice could be the key to managing IT. This research aims to identify the factors that an organisation should consider when making an information systems buy vs build decision. Interviews were conducted with 10 organisations across a spread of industries, involving key strategic IT decision-making personnel at the senior IT executive level. By examining the operational approaches adopted in each of these organisations and the key drivers behind these approaches, we identify the core factors that affect real-world buy vs build decisions in large Australian organisations with a turnover in excess of $750 million. We found that a number of core factors - strategy, commodity and competitive advantage, maturity, cost and requirements fit - critically affect buy vs build, while peripheral factors - risk, time and timing, political factors, and ongoing support - are secondary considerations.

Exploring the effects of direct experience on IT use: An organizational field study

Empirical studies have investigated the effect of attitude and behavior on IT acceptance in organizations but yielded ambiguous results. Possibly they have not effectively accounted for the moderating effects of experience gained through direct interaction with the target technology. We examined the moderating effect of the length of direct experience on IT acceptance relationships and constructs. Using multi-group invariance analysis, we demonstrated that relationships between key IT acceptance constructs differed, depending on the user's experience. The incorporation of direct experience can lead to convergent results and contribute to further understanding of the process. We discuss some implications from the knowledge that IT use is a dynamic process and suggest that IT management must account for direct experience in their decision making.

Best execution in electronic banking and brokerage: an analysis of business and technical requirements

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) has to be applied by investment firms and regulated markets in Europe from 1 November 2007. The goal of this paper is to discuss and evaluate its key regulatory requirements, associated business and IT implications with an emphasis on the best execution obligation. Based on that, different alternatives for the practical realisation in organisational processes and IT systems will be presented. Empirical evidence is provided based on the results of two studies on the preparatory status for MiFID of the German financial industry conducted in 2006 and 2007.

Strengthening the Weakest Link in Digital Protection

Although much has been written about digital protection technologies, the greatest vulnerability in any system is invariably the person behind the keyboard. In our one-semester course at the US Military Academy in New York, we educate roughly 800 undergraduates from nontechnical fields each year on intermediate-level IT skills. We place our students in an isolated virtual-computing environment, give them hands-on experience with a variety of attack vectors that hackers use to exploit vulnerabilities, and provide them with a multidimensional framework for understanding and mitigating risks. As a result of this educational experience, our students are better able to internalize the concepts we teach and end up with an increased realization of the actions required to protect crucial resources. To achieve our goal of reducing the potential vulnerabilities nontechnical users introduce, we've integrated three major components into our course: 1) a broad overview of key IT topics; 2) lessons directly targeting information assurance (IA); and 3) a recurring thread of ethical and security considerations that's explicitly injected into lessons throughout the semester

Developments In Practice XXI: IT in the New World of Corporate Governance Reforms

In the past, IT was only marginally affected by regulatory matters. Today, however, IT is in the middle of a whirlwind of corporate governance reforms. New standards for internal controls are affecting almost every aspect of IT work. These, in turn, have significant implications on how IT is managed and on IT costs and productivity. For example, many IT organizations have been so involved in developing and implementing Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) procedures that very little has actually been accomplished for the business itself. This paper explores how new compliance frameworks and governance reforms, mandated by governments and/or industry groups, are changing IT work. It examines what IT managers perceive to be most significant issues these reforms present IT in their particular organizations. This paper is not designed to provide detailed information about IT controls and how to achieve them. Instead, it is intended to be a general introduction to the changing expectations of IT and how these are affecting IT work, structure and governance. It looks at the new effects regulatory issues are having in IT, and then examines the key issues IT managers face in an increasingly regulated environment. Next, it identifies the key areas within IT that are affected and the types of activities that need to be addressed by managers in order to achieve effective controls. Finally some recommended good practices are presented. The authors conclude that there is no question that new laws and regulations governing organizations, their finances and their information are having a huge impact on IT. IT managers are struggling to implement new controls and document existing ones, while still ensuring business as usual and trying to develop the new systems their companies need. The world is requiring IT to become thoroughly professional about what it does. The IT of the future will therefore of necessity be increasingly controlled, standardized and bureaucratized. It remains to be seen whether or not management will be able to use this "new and improved" IT for competitive advantage.

Six Sigma and Business Excellence: Strategic and Tactical Examination of IT Service Level Management at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer of Washington, DC

AbstractDuring the period January through May 2003 ten teams of student consultants from the Quality Enhancement Systems & Teams (QUEST) Interdisciplinary Honors Program, the Robert H. Smith School of Business and the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland conducted a quality analysis of Information Technology Service Level Management (ITSLM) for the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) of the Government of the District of Columbia. OCTO is largely funded by the United States Congress and is the key IT provider for various public sector agencies in Washington, DC including Metropolitan Police, the Department of Motor Vehicles, Fire and Rescue, Public Works, and DC Public Schools. Five areas of ITSLM were examined through two lenses with a student consulting team assigned to each area and lens. These areas of ITSLM were Availability Management, Capacity Management, Financial Management, Service Continuity, and Service Level Management with Service Continuity essentially referring to ‘disaster recovery’. The two lenses were Six Sigma Strategies and Methods and Business Excellence. Six Sigma is a highly structured approach to process improvement and design while Business Excellence holds to the principles and criteria that are foundational to various international quality awards such as America's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award or the European Quality Award. In either case, at its most fundamental level, the goal is to advance a public or private sector entity on the path to excellence. While analysis indicated that OCTO is on the path towards making Washington, DC the ‘City of Access’, a number of strategic and tactical improvement suggestions were identified that will further enable OCTO in this endeavor. Presented herein are selected results from applying the two approaches to performance improvement. In all, the results are synergistic, suggesting that the two lenses can be coordinated to accomplish more in conjunction than can either employed in isolation. Projections by OCTO of potential cost‐savings resulting from application of selected suggestions range from $2 million to $3 million. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Information Technology and the Performance of the Customer Service Process: A Resource-Based Analysis

Delivering quality customer service has emerged as a strategic imperative, one that is increasingly tied to a firm's information technology resources and capabilities. This paper presents an empirical study that examines the extent to which IT impacts customer service. More specifically, this study investigates the differential effects of various IT resources and capabilities on the performance of the customer service process across firms that compete in the North American life and health insurance industry. The paper builds on (1) information systems work that suggests that the effects of IT are best documented at the level of processes within a firm, (2) information systems work that suggests that the performance effects of IT are likely to be contingent in nature, and (3) developments in the resource-based view, which describes the kinds of IT resources and capabilities that are likely to enable a process in one firm to outperform the same process in competing firms. The findings suggest that tacit, socially complex, firm-specific resources explain variation in process performance across firms and that IT resources and capabilities without these attributes do not. Of particular interest to IS scholars, it is found that shared knowledge between IT and customer service units-an important driver of how IT is implemented and used in the customer service process-is a key IT capability that affects customer service process performance and moderates the impacts of explicit IT resources such as the generic information technologies used in the process and IT spending, which-consistent with resource-based predictions-were not found to be directly and positively associated with relative process performance. The implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed.

Information technology at IKEA: an “open sesame” solution or just another type of facility?

Information technology and such business applications as IT systems create great expectations to solve most problems a company faces. However, these expectations are seldom fulfilled. This article treats IT and IT systems simply as a facility among many other resources (products, facilities, business units and relationships) in business networks. By making use of a case study centred around Product Information Assistance (PIA), one of IKEA's key IT systems for product information administration, the analytical part extracts a series of interactions patterns between IT facilities and the surrounding resources. Being IT systems also embedded into other resources implies that their effects seldom turn out to be as expected or simply defined by their technical potentials.

Update: Key IT issues and trends

AbstractIt seems that changes are rushing toward us at an accelerating rate. Most business analysts see a period of uncertainty ahead. So what will be the key issues and trends for IT in the immediate future—and beyond? © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Evaluating the Options for Business-To-Business E-Exchanges

E-commerce demands that IT managers pay just as close attention to business issues as to technical ones. What are the company's goals for the B2B E-commerce marketplace? What are the volume and size of the buyer–supplier transactions? How unique and complex are the buyer–supplier interaction processes in the firm? These are some of the key business questions IT managers must be able to answer. This article addresses these questions, as well as others, and takes an equally close look at the issues surrounding infrastructure and technology.

The Contribution of IT Governance Solutions to the Implementation of Data Warehouse Practice

Information systems (IS) strategic planners debate what is the most appropriate data warehouse (DW) topology for an organization. The primary question is whether to start DW projects with enterprise-wide data warehouses (EDWs) or with smaller-scale data marts (DMs). This article examines the relationship between modes of IT governance and DW topology to determine whether or not the implementation differences in DW topology can be described by differences in IT governance arrangements. Three primary modes of IT governance–centralized, decentralized, and hybrid – were used to arrange key IT activities. A replicated case study approach coupled with a research survey was used to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between modes of IT governance and DW topology. Utilizing information from six organizations, the empirical evidence presented indicates that the organizations with higher levels of centralized IT authority are likely to implement a more centralized data warehousing approach. Key implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Don't Just Lead, Govern: Implementing Effective IT Governance

Firms achieving above industry average returns from IT investments must be making consistently better IT-related decisions. Effective IT governance is one of the ways these firms achieve superior returns. Many firms are creating IT governance structures that encourage the behavior leading to achieving the firm's business performance goals. We define IT governance as specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT. Effective IT governance requires careful analysis about who makes decisions and how decisions are made in at least four critical domains of IT: principles, infrastructure, architecture, and investment and prioritization. We studied the use of IT in large multi-business unit firms in the USA and Europe and found that the typical firm governs IT by following generally accepted guidelines with broad-based inputs and tightly controlled decision rights. However, top-performing firms governed IT differently with governance structures linked to the performance measure on which they excelled (e.g., growth). Designing an effective IT governance structure requires understanding the competing forces in a large organization and creating harmony among business objectives, governance archetype and business performance goals. An effective IT governance structure is the single most important predictor of getting value from IT. To help understand and design more effective governance, we propose an IT governance framework that specifies how decisions are made in the key IT domains. The framework harmonizes desired governance archetypes (i.e., monarchy, feudal, federal and anarchy) and a series of governance mechanisms (e.g., committees, approval processes and organizational forms). The framework is illustrated with effective IT governance at State Street Corporation. Effective IT governance encourages and leverages the ingenuity of all the firm's people in using IT, not just the leaders, while still ensuring compliance with the firm's overall vision and principles. In short, don't just lead, govern!

Integrating electronic information resources for NHS Glasgow staff at the point of need: a model of interlibrary collaboration and resource sharing.

The Glasgow NHS Libraries Consortium has harnessed the political imperative of collaboration and the capability of electronic information resources to address inequalities in access to the knowledge base across NHS Glasgow. They have negotiated consortium arrangements to an extensive range of electronic databases and journals which no single Glasgow NHS library could afford independently. A Project Officer was appointed to undertake the administration, technical work and promotion required to build a Web-based electronic library to deliver resources to all NHS Glasgow staff on an equitable basis. Close partnership with online content providers enabled the Project Officer to find solutions to problems caused by authentication systems and license restrictions. These efforts have culminated in the production of a fully integrated virtual library--the NHS Glasgow e-Library--delivering 11 major electronic databases, 440 full-text electronic journals, 48 electronic textbooks and over 5000 journal contents pages. The NHS Glasgow e-Library is without precedent within the NHS in terms of its wealth of resources, and it provides a model for Scotland-wide access to the knowledge base. The sustainability and transferability of the resource is dependent on a number of key areas-maintenance, user training, evaluation, IT infrastructure and ongoing collaboration and unification. Ongoing research will monitor how far the NHS Glasgow e-Library has strengthened the connection between research evidence and clinical practice.

An empirical study of misalignment between Australian CEOs and IT managers

This paper discusses the results of a critical success factors (CSFs) study carried out to determine the key IT management needs of Australian CEOs. In the past, several studies to determine the IT management needs have been carried out, but they have aimed mostly at the IT managers, not the CEOs. This study fills this gap, and by comparing the CSFs of the CEOs with those of the IT managers shows the areas of misalignment in the management of IT in Australian enterprises. It is concluded that to achieve ongoing alignment, the CEOs and senior executives need to gain management level understanding of IT. But perhaps, even more important is for IT managers to develop a business oriented perspective for the success of their enterprise.

Arrangements for Information Technology Governance: A Theory of Multiple Contingencies

A key issue facing information systems researchers and practitioners has been the difficulty in IT governance arrangements refers to the patterns of authority for key IT activities in business firms, including IT infrastructure, IT use, and project management. During the last 20 years, three primary modes of IT governance have become prevalent: centralized, decentralized, and the federal mode. These modes vary in the extent to which corporate IS, divisional IS, and line management are vested with authority for the key IT activities. While a significant volume of research has examined the influence of contingency factors on the choice of a specific mode of IT governance, most of this research has examined the singular effects of the contingency factors. The assumption underlying these studies is as though the organizational contingencies act in isolation in influencing the mode of IT governance. However, in reality, business firms are subject to the pulls and pressures of multiple, rather than singular, contingency forces. Therefore, to acknowledge this reality, this study applies the theory of multiple contingencies to examine how contingency forces influence the mode of IT governance. The theory argues that contingency forces interact with each other by either amplifying, dampening, or overriding their mutual influences on the IT governance mode. Three scenarios of multiple, interacting contingencies are identified: reinforcing, conflicting, and dominating. Each of these scenarios of multiple contingencies is hypothesized to influence a particular mode of IT governance. Utilizing rich data from case studies of eight firms, empirical evidence is presented to support these hypotheses. Implications of the multiple contingencies theory for research and for practice are presented.

IT outsourcing contracts: practical issues for management

Presents a practical and systematic overview of some key IT outsourcing contractual issues, exploring and highlighting management implications where appropriate. Discusses issues such as service level, transfer of assets, staffing, pricing and payment, warranty and liability, dispute resolution mechanism, termination, intellectual property matters, and information security. Gives practical advice on pre‐contractual negotiation and post‐contractual management. By discussing these issues systematically from a management and practical perspective, contributes to bridging the gap between theory and practice and seeks to offer useful information to management considering IT outsourcing.

IT Facilities Management

Business′ most vital resource has become its biggest cost liability. Companies which continue to let the uncontrolled IT tail wag the facilities management (FM) dog are losing their competitive edge. Examines cause and effect as well as implications for businesses and managers. Discusses why FMs must assume proactive responsibility for cost control. Examines key FM asset management issues, methods of approach and available IT management solutions.