Information Technology and Organizational Learning
Question 1
According to Langer (2017), “strategic integration is a process that addresses the business-strategic impact of technology on organizational processes”(p. 43). In other words, technological business-strategic impacts require certain immediate responses from within an organization, and in some cases, zero latency. These responses may include scaling of organizational resources across traditional geographic-business boundaries, redefinition of value chains in product or service line life cycles, and the fostering of agile business processes (p. 43). Strategic integration is very important because it ensures that organizations are able to deal with any changes that result from the use of technology in their business processes (p. 44). The business environment has become very competitive, and many business organizations – whether small or established – are embracing new technologies in an attempt to remain competitive. But even as these business organizations and companies embrace the use of technologies, they are faced with the need to acquire technological infrastructures that can easily be integrated into their operations (p. 44).
Langer (2017) proceeds to state that when organizations invest in IT, their experiences result in two phases of returns. First, there are those organizations that experience declining or negative productivity when they invest in IT. Second, there are organizations that experience lagged productivity at first, followed by a return to productivity (p. 44). The declining productivity in the first case and the lagged productivity in the second case can be attributed to the failure or inability of business organizations to effectively integrate new technologies into their business processes. These complications can, however, be resolved through strategic integration, which can be achieved through some of the following ways: aligning IT with business objectives and goals, redesigning business processes so that they can easily be integrated with new technologies, among other strategies (p. 46). Without strategic integration, any attempts to integrate new technologies into business processes will fail.
Question 2
Departments within organizations perform two generic functions: supporters and drivers (p. 58). These functions relate to what each individual department contributes to organizational goals. Langer describes drivers as “those units or departments that are engaged in direct or frontline revenue-generating activities, such as marketing units within organizations”. On the other hand, supporters are described as those units or departments not engaged in frontline revenue-generating activities, but to provide support to units in the frontline. For instance, operations such as office management, purchasing, and internal activities can be categorized as supporters. An understanding of these function classifications is very important because IT can play both the support and driver functions (p. 59). However, it can be very difficult to distinguish between supporter and driver functions when it comes to IT.
IT driver functions can be described as those functions aimed at identifiable ROI and direct revenue. It, however, becomes very difficult to identify these functions within IT because most driver functions fall under marketing units (p. 59). Langer (2017) defines IT driver functions as projects that change or influence relationships between organizations and their customers (p. 59). It is, therefore, important for organizations to be able to distinguish between supporter and driver functions because redesign the responsibilities and roles of IT within organizations in accordance with the theory of driver and support (p. 60). In most organizations, IT departments are designed to offer support services. This kind of design is inefficient because it limits IT departments from understanding business operations that need driver-type activities (p. 60). For IT departments to be able to distinguish between the two functions, it becomes necessary to design then under the auspices of the theory of driver ad support.
References
Langer, A. M. (2017). Information Technology and Organizational Learning: Managing Behavioral Change in the Digital Age. CRC Press.