Research at the University of Texas at Austin for financial support. Prabhudev Konana

Abstract While on a business flight, a CEO reads in an airline magazine about an information technology innovation that promises fabulous returns to the adopting corporation. Returning home, the CEO demands immediate action from the senior information systems executive. So goes a story current among systems practitioners. This tale of ``Airline Magazine Syndrome' ' is analyzed here as an instance of narrative, through research informed by innovation theory and field interviews with business executives and systems practitioners. The analysis considers both how the story depends for its meaning on the sociotechnical context of innovation, and how that context is illuminated by the listener's engagement with the story. ``Airline Magazine Syndrome'' is a kind of moral drama, in which misdeeds portend crisis and failure. As such, there are also lessons for a happier ending, in the domain of real practice, in which organizational innovation with information technology can have better prospects for success.

Given societies' massive investment in information technology and the potentially catastrophic consequences of IT failures, it is becoming increasingly critical to understand how IT management policies influence IT management practice and, ultimately, organizational success in implementing and employing information technology. This paper describes a study that took place in a large government agency and sheds some light on the interaction of IT policy, practice and success (or, in this case, failure).

The relationship between the implantation and development of information technology (IT) and improvements in business performance has been a matter of interest to professionals and researchers in Management since the 1980’s. Despite numerous studies that have attempted to determine the full impact of IT, no conclusive results have as yet emerged. This situation has been termed the productivity paradox (or technology paradox) of the new technologies. In this paper we define this phenomenon and propose some methods of analysis for detecting the kind of situations in which it occurs. Finally we propose an IT management model for use in companies.

Enhanced information sharing among criminal justice agencies is a critical concern and a goal of much IT investment. Understanding agencies ’ capabilities to achieve this goal is central to successful planning and investments, but indeed a difficult endeavor. The difficulty rests in part on the multiple and divergent theory frames for describing and understanding capability. This paper proposes a way of describing and assessing capabilities that goes beyond traditional resource-based models of organizational capability to include ideas from institutional and practice based perspectives. In this new perspective, capabilities are seen as multidimensional phenomena that are resource based and embedded in organizational routines, but we argue they are enacted through work practices, located in and bounded by their institutional contexts. The paper draws on literature from strategic management, information systems and organizational studies as well as practice theories to support this perspective. It then describes how this multidimensional perspective was used to develop an assessment tool for use in the criminal justice information initiatives. This is followed by a brief description of how the capability assessment tool was developed with a national panel of practitioners responsible for justice information integration initiatives and then applied within the context of one initiative. The test results illustrate the potential of the extended model in building a fuller understanding of the dimensions of organizational capability in practice and the utility of practical tools based on these dimensions. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.6.1 [Project and People Management]: Life cycle management techniques (e.g., PERT/CPM), Staffing, Strategic

Computer networks are used in different organizations to many purposes. Some use them internally to enable work processes, others may see network as a strategic resource. This paper looks at local area networks, those networks that are the core of the entire information system in organizations today. The are many important management tasks in the area of local area networks, for example expansion planning and security. Outsourcing is seen as a possible solution in organizing network management tasks.

Although information systems are an integral part of every modern organization, IS faculty often struggle to show MBA students the value of the core IS course in the MBA curriculum. This is also evidenced by the fact that some business schools do not have an IS course in the core MBA curriculum. MBA courses often use case analyses to provide students opportunities to apply conceptual material. However, written business cases are necessarily simplifications of reality, and therefore lack the richness of live business situations. Projects that require students to engage in some activity with a live organization are another way to provide students the opportunity to apply newly-learned concepts. This paper describes the use the Information Orientation (IO) Maturity Model as the basis of a MBA course-based project. The IO model explicitly draws the relationship between business performance and several information and technology management concepts. More importantly, the IO Model is accompanied by a specific method of gathering and analyzing data, and includes general recommendations on how to improve the “IO Maturity ” of an organization. The IO model posits that the organization that demonstrates effective uses of information (information orientation behaviors and values- IBV), information management (information management practices –

The international transfer of technology (ITT) is a very complex, risky, time consuming and expensive endeavor. However, ITT is becoming increasingly important due to rapid changes of technology amongst high-tech companies, the shortening of technology and product life cycles, intense competition and saturation of markets. In addition, a successful ITT process can facilitate internationalization for the technology supplier as well as offer benefits to the technology supplying country, the technology receiver and the technology receiving country. Increasingly, information technology (IT) is becoming faster, cheaper and easier to use and the Internet is rapidly penetrating in developing and newly industrializing countries. These factors reinforce the need for an investigation of success factors related to the internationalization of high-tech companies through an IT-supported technology transfer process. This research has been executed by analyzing a resource-based approach, reviewing li...

Abstract The current study provides a model that aims to explain the origin of the competitive advantage of organizations in terms of the ownership structure. We have also studied the interactions between IT use and ownership structure. To reach these objectives, we have classified the organizations in two groups using the cooperative character criterion. The results show that cooperative firms achieve a superior competitive advantage regardless of the amount of IT that the firms use. The study is focused on the Spanish Pharmaceutical Distribution Industry. 1.

The role of IT in the creation of business value has been considered from various perspectives, such as strategic alignment, sustained advantage, and infrastructure capability. In this paper, we try to extend these previous perspectives by describing a flexible sensemaking framework for valuing complex technological resources. This framework assumes that the nature of IT business value is pluralistic, paradoxical, and dynamic. We describe four modes of valuation that comprise this framework: Routinizing, Cost-structuring, Positioning, and Learning, and illustrate them using historical lessons from airline reservation systems. Findings suggest that IT-derived business value can be characterized by competing tensions across diverse value frames that are paradoxically structured and change over time. We propose that such a pluralistic approach will extend the vocabulary of IT-derived business value and will improve managerial capability for sensemaking across multiple frames.