Towards Clarity and Understanding- A Study of Strategic Success Factors in IT-management

Abstract

This thesis concerns the strategic success factors (SSF) of IT-management that forms the foundation of organisational development. According to our study this is characterised by: * Holistic orientation IT-management should be aware of both opportunities and threats generated by a turbulent and heterogeneous environment. A closed internal developmental philosophy can not remove organisational weakness or organisational blindness. * Business orientation IT-management should be aware of quality issues. The traditional view of evaluating the success of development in terms of costs does not indicate that the quality perceived by customers and suppliers have been improved. * Social orientation IT-management should be aware that goal priorities and resource allocation do not provide or support success. Only a co-ordinated philosophy that synchronises business development, systems development and organisational learning can secure success. * Process orientation IT-management should be aware that development can not be co-ordinated trough well-defined master plans or through intuition. Neither the comprehensibility of a heterogeneous and dynamic environment nor the continuity of human motivation can be managed by the traditional philosophies. The foundation of IT-management is characterised by local and universal as well as temporal and non-temporal strategic success factors. The universal factors concerns IT and business alignment, organisational learning, IS effectiveness and strategic planning. These factors are relatively stable whereas local factors are unstable. The ability of management to keep these factors in harmony may be seen as situational strategic factors.