INSS605 Paper Mill Organization Information Technology Management Paper Hi dearThis is an information technology management project of 3 articles and it h

INSS605 Paper Mill Organization Information Technology Management Paper Hi dearThis is an information technology management project of 3 articles

and it has only 3 questions

You have to answer every question based on the three cases

So every question will have 3 paragraphs of answers

I will attached my friend answers last semester with the same prof with his feedback

He said that answer 1 is excellent but question 2 and 3 need more work

(see the prof comment in the end of the attachment of (my friend answers)

So For question 1 you can take my friend answer but just rephrase it and change the style of it

And work and answer question 2,3

Thank you

Please also see the Rubric (attached on the end of guidance file)

prof looks at Analysis, Comprehension, and Writing.

Thank you The questions below are based on the following three case studies of
information systems projects/initiatives –
•
“Information Systems Use as Strategy Practice – A Multi-Dimensional View of
Strategic Information System Implementation and Use,” (.pdf file), published in
Journal of Strategic Information Systems
•
“Better Data Brings a Renewal at the Bank of England,” (.pdf file), published in
MIT Sloan Management Review
•
“Failure of Large Transformation Projects from the Viewpoint of Complex
Adaptive Systems: Management Principles for Dealing with Project Dynamics,”
(.pdf file), published in Information Systems Frontiers
QUESTIONS
1. What internal and/or external factors drove the initiatives at each company?
Were these initiatives put in place as responses to challenges or to
opportunities?
2. How were business value, competitive advantage, risk, and organizational
change considered in each project? Should they have been handled any
differently?
3. In terms of organizational information integration, does each company appear to
be pursuing the correct technological path? Suggest alternatives, additional
initiatives, and/or next steps for each.
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23 (2014) 45–61
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Strategic Information Systems
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jsis
Information systems use as strategy practice: A
multi-dimensional view of strategic information
system implementation and use
Viktor Arvidsson a,b,c,?, Jonny Holmström a,b, Kalle Lyytinen d
a
Swedish Center for Digital Innovation, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden
Department of Informatics, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden
c
Umeå Centre for Gender Studies, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden
d
Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Available online 20 February 2014
Keywords:
Strategic IS implementation
Multi-dimensional view of IS strategy
Strategic change
Information systems use
Cognitive entrenchment
a b s t r a c t
Information systems (IS) are strategic in so far as they are used to realize strategic intent.
Yet, while much has been said about aligning IS functionality with the strategic intent and
how to organizationally implement strategically aligned systems, less is known of how to
successfully implement strategic change associated with system use – a truly critical challenge within strategic IS implementation. Drawing on a strategy-as-practice perspective
we address this gap by developing a multi-dimensional view of IS strategy, conceptualizing
three key challenges in the IS strategy process, to explain how and why a paper mill,
despite successfully implementing a strategic production management system, failed to
produce intended strategic change. We call this outcome strategy blindness: organizational
incapability to realize the strategic intent of implemented, available system capabilities.
Using a longitudinal case study we investigate how cognitive rigidity of key actors and
?xed, interrelated practices shaped the implementation of the new production system.
We also identify core components and dynamics that constitute a richer multi-dimensional
view of the IS strategy implementation (alignment) process. In particular, we identify three
salient factors that contribute to strategy blindness – mistranslation of intent, ?exibility of
the IT artifact and cognitive entrenchment – and discuss how they affect strategic implementation processes. We conclude by discussing implications of our ?ndings for IS strategy
theory and practice, especially the contribution of strategy-as-practice to this stream of
research.
Ó 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY license.
1. Introduction
Claims that strategic investments in information technology (IT) are instrumental to ?rms’ long-term survival are now
regarded as truisms. The truth behind these truisms, however, is that IT investments matter only as far as IT capabilities become embedded in new organizational practice (Doherty and Terry, 2009; Galliers, 2011; Markus and Robey, 2004; Peppard
and Ward, 2004; Sambamurthy et al., 2003). Information systems (IS) strategies should therefore complement high-level
? Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 73 807 4686; fax: +46 90 786 6550.
E-mail addresses: viktor.arvidsson@informatik.umu.se (V. Arvidsson), jonny.holmstrom@informatik.umu.se (J. Holmström), kalle.lyytinen@case.edu
(K. Lyytinen).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2014.01.004
0963-8687/Ó 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY license.
46
V. Arvidsson et al. / Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23 (2014) 45–61
organizational investment goals and identify IT-enabled organizational changes necessary to realize them (Reich and
Benbasat, 1996). While much attention is paid to the challenge of aligning a ?rm’s strategic intent with investments in IT
capabilities (Chan et al., 1997; Chan and Reich, 2007) and the challenge of organizationally implementing those IT capabilities (Markus, 2004; Orlikowski, 2000), however, little is still known of how to implement the encompassing strategic change
(Silva and Hirschheim, 2007) from which strategic bene?ts from IT investments ultimately ensue (Cooper and Zmud, 1990;
Wade and Hulland, 2004). Addressing this challenge, indeed, remains a critical concern for IS strategy practice and research
(Galliers et al., 2012; Nolan, 2012; Ward, 2012). To this end, we ask how and why successful organizational implementation of
new IT capabilities that align with strategic intent often leads to unexpected outcomes (cf. Markus and Robey, 2004; Robey
and Boudreau, 1999) in that they fail to produce intended strategic effects (cf. Franz et al., 1986; Robey, 1981). We label this
outcome strategy blindness: the organizational incapability to realize the strategic intent of implemented, available IT
capabilities.
Our observation is grounded in a longitudinal case study (Yin, 1989) at a Swedish paper mill (PaperMill hereafter). Adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective (Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009), we focus on how situated actors and interrelated organizational practices (Orlikowski, 2000; Schatzki et al., 2001) shaped the implementation of a new production management
system. Building on IT adaptation (e.g., Beaudry and Pinsonneault, 2005) and change-recipient sense-making literature (e.g.
Balogun and Johnson, 2005, 2004), we investigate how cognitive entrenchment and associated ?xity of situated practices
(Dane, 2010) in?uenced the way PaperMill came to frame and cope with the new system during implementation and subsequent use. Our ?ndings are unorthodox: Technically, the implementation was successful as the system became embedded
in organizational routines and the mill viewed the implementation as a success (cf. Markus, 2004). Strategically, however,
the implementation failed, as it did not produce intended organizational change; instead of creatively using the new system
to enable the new strategic intent, the system was creatively implemented to reproduce existing practices. In essence, the
organization appears stubbornly and strategically blind. Our objective is to understand this dilemma and explore why some
organizations become engulfed in strategy blindness rather than promoting strategic change.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. First, we review the literature on IS strategy implementation to conceptualize three key challenges within the IS strategy process and outline a multi-dimensional view of IS strategy and change
informed by strategy-as-practice research. We then review research on cognitive entrenchment to further re?ne our theoretical lens. Next, we describe the research setting and approach before presenting the ?ndings from our case. Having illustrated the use of our multi-dimensional perspective, we further detail its core components and underlying mechanisms and
discuss its possible applications. We then discuss three key factors that can contribute to strategy blindness, before concluding with a discussion of the implications of this research for both IS strategy practice and research.
2. Related research
2.1. IS strategy research: intents, implementations and realizations
In their recent review, Chen et al. (2010) identi?ed three persistent strands within IS strategy research: (1) alignment of
information systems with business strategy (e.g. Chan et al., 1997; Chan and Reich, 2007); (2) strategic information system
planning to identify such portfolios of systems (e.g. Galliers, 2004; Ward and Peppard, 2002) and (3) the resultant use of speci?c systems, or their combinations, for competitive advantage (e.g. Melville et al., 2004; Piccoli and Ives, 2005; Wade and
Hulland, 2004). Regardless of which strand is being examined, extant research assumes that any IS strategy is dependent
upon the way it is enacted. It is therefore critical to maintain tight linkages between the ?rm’s strategic intent, the ensuing
IS strategy implementation and the de facto realized strategy. This suggests three key challenges to successful IS strategy
implementation: (1) to achieve theoretical alignment between strategic intent and system capabilities; (2) to implement
the system organizationally and (3) to shape the use of the system and related practices to achieve practical alignment with
the strategic intent (Fig. 1). We review each of these challenges next.
The capability to build and maintain strategic intent is central to any successful IS strategy. A strategic intent ‘‘envisions a
desired leadership position and establishes the criterion the organization will use to chart its progress’’ (Hamel and Prahalad,
2005: 64). Accordingly, organizations that exhibit a consistent strategic intent will allocate their resources effectively and
engage in competitive activities that help achieve their objectives – including choices of IT systems and capabilities (Thompson et al., 2010). While any large IS project involves the set-up of system objectives and selection of IT capabilities necessary
to achieve desired results (Keil et al., 2000), the ?rst challenge highlights how selected system objectives and capabilities do
not always mesh with the organization’s strategic intent (Mähring et al., 2004).
Even when the selected system capabilities align with the established strategic intent, however, the system implementation itself often proves another strategic challenge (Markus and Benjamin, 2003). Although apparent misalignments between strategic intent and system capabilities are evident in several failed strategic IS implementations (e.g. Pollock and
Cornford, 2004; Wagner and Newell, 2004), it is often the inability to implement the ‘strategically aligned’ system that causes
an IS strategy process to fail. In a sense, the concept of a successful organizational implementation as part of a successful IS
strategy has been part of the key assumptions of IS strategy literature, though not always explicitly stated. In fact, though
failed, incomplete or inadequate implementations of IT systems abound in their strategic context (e.g. Leonard-Barton,
1988; Orlikowski, 1996; Majchrzak et al., 2000; Soh and Sia, 2004; Boudreau and Robey, 2005), IS strategy literature typically
V. Arvidsson et al. / Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23 (2014) 45–61
47
Fig. 1. Three critical dimensions within IS strategy implementation.
characterizes the implementation as a necessary and inevitable process of mutual adaptation towards eventual strategic
alignment. Attempting to avoid associated pitfalls, we conceptualize the second strategic challenge as concerning the
capability to implement the system both on time and with acceptable risk, and in ways that ful?ll the expectations of users
(cf. Markus, 2004; Silva and Hirschheim, 2007).
As a result of the unanticipated ways in which IT becomes appropriated in local practice (Barley, 1986; Orlikowski, 2000,
1992), however, not even an otherwise successful implementation of a strategically aligned system can ensure that strategic
intents materialize (e.g. Robey et al., 2002). Understanding the critical and complex role that practices play in shaping how IT
systems are enacted is thus key for successful IS strategy implementation (Orlikowski, 2000). Sadly, conceptualizations of
strategic IT use within organizations commonly rest on the naive assumption that, for the system to be strategically successful, the IT system must just be successfully ‘embedded’ in relevant practices. Successful IS strategy implementation, however,
increasingly implies punctuation (Nolan, 2012; Ward, 2012) i.e. systematic re-structuring and re-arranging of organizational
practices (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1992; Silva and Hirschheim, 2007). In situations characterized either by deep, unexpected misalignment between con?icting organizational structures and the new IT system (inadequate or one-sided embedding), or where local practices continue unchanged, alignment between the IT system and strategic intent will never be
reached and the strategic IS implementation will thus inevitably fail (Sia and Soh, 2007). Therefore, the third strategic challenge concerns the organizational capability to enact IT-enabled change: transforming and re-con?guring local practices to
align both system use and related organizational practices with the strategic intent.
While a major challenge for the IS strategy ?eld will continue to be that of dealing with the complexity of how each of
these three challenges play out in dynamic, networked political and economic contexts (Merali et al., 2012), we feel that the
last challenge is the least understood (cf. Silva and Hirschheim, 2007; Wade and Hulland, 2004). Although IS research has
largely failed to recognize this challenge in its own right (cf. Markus, 2004), alternative theoretical assumptions, such as
those offered by the strategy-as-practice perspective used here, hold great promise (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Johnson et al., 2007). In viewing the IS strategy process as a bundle of situated, practical accomplishments (Schatzki et al., 2001), it is indeed well equipped to elucidate the subtle interactions between challenges on the one
hand and the practical setting on the other. In so doing, it can provide key insights into how and why successful organizational implementation of new and strategically aligned IT capabilities sometimes fails to transform existing practices. To this
end, we next review the research on strategy-as-practice and discuss the concept of cognitive entrenchment (Dane, 2010),
which we argue is a common cause for the type of strategic failure we call strategy blindness.
2.2. Strategy-as-practice, IS and entrenchment
By arguing that strategy research has lost sight of human beings (e.g. Whittington, 2003) and mistakenly reduced strategy
to a few causally-related organizational and environmental variables (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007), the strategy-as-practice
perspective suggests the need to understand why and what strategic actors do as they construct, implement and realize strategic intents (Johnson et al., 2007; Whittington, 2003); researchers have, for example, commonly investigated how these
processes are shaped by actors’ emotions, motivations and social and political interactions (Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009)
and the contexts in which they act (Jarzabkowski, 2005; Whittington, 2006).
Against this backdrop, the strategy-as-practice perspective directs attention to the practice of strategy – strategizing – and
the practices actors draw upon to justify and legitimize both the future state they seek to bring and the actions they take to
achieve this end (cf. Schatzki et al., 2001). In so doing, researchers often stress the performative dimension of strategy work:
As ‘‘actors in their micro-situations are not acting in isolation but are drawing upon [. . .] the social institutions in which they
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V. Arvidsson et al. / Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23 (2014) 45–61
belong’’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007: 6), the practices within which actors are situated structure (cf. Orlikowski, 2000; Schatzki
et al., 2001) strategic activities such as formulating strategic intents, choosing the system strategy and implementing the
system i.e. the process through which strategic IS implementation unfolds. Conversely, while present practices affect which
futures strategic actors seek, these envisioned futures simultaneously constitute particular realities, recursively shaping actions in the present (Kornberger and Clegg, 2011).
The strategy-as-practice perspective resonates with recent elements of IS strategy research which reinforce the idea that
IT matters only when it becomes embedded in local practices (Doherty and Terry, 2009; Galliers, 2011; Markus and Robey,
2004; Peppard and Ward, 2004; Sambamurthy et al., 2003). As practice, IS strategy seeks to realize the potential value of IT
by re-de?ning and re-focusing the role of IT within organizations (Chen et al., 2010; Wagner and Newell, 2004). In so doing,
practices often have to be re-con?gured in order for value to be realized (Galliers, 2011; Melville et al., 2004); indeed, extant
research holds that business value derived from IT investments primarily emerges through business changes and related
innovations (Grover and Kohli, 2012; Mathiassen and Sorensen, 2008; Robey et al., 2002). As the strategic role of IT increasingly shifts from supporting organizational practices to enabling bold organizational change (Nolan, 2012; Ward, 2012),
understanding how and why IT becomes locally embedded in a particular way is therefore a growing concern. It is against
this backdrop that we ask how and why some organizations fail to produce organizational change despite having successfully implemented new strategic IT.
Research on IT adaptation (e.g. Beaudry and Pinsonneault, 2005; Orlikowski, 2000, 1996; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994) and
change-recipient sense-making (e.g., Balogun, 2006; Balogun and Johnson, 2005, 2004; Stensaker and Falkenberg, 2007) provide a solid foundation for addressing this question. For example, Beaudry and Pinsonneault (2005) suggested that actors
adapt to new IT systems as part of their cognitive and behavioral coping. Similarly, Orlikowski and Gash (1994) showed
how assumptions, knowledge and expectations about an IT system shaped its subsequent use. Orlikowski (2000, 1996) also
proposed a practice view of IT adaptation, perceiving use as enacted through situated practices. Furthermore, Balogun (2006)
argued that strategic change often results in unexpected outcomes because top management control is tenuous at most. Similarly, Balogun and Johnson (2005, 2004) stressed the signi?cant role middle management plays as ‘change intermediaries’ in
the change-implementation, a position allowing them to frame both aims and outcomes. Stensaker and Falkenberg (2007)
offered a similar view, providing links between frames, responses and outcomes. Accordingly, IS and strategy-as-practice research show a shared appreciation for how change-recipients in?uence change outcomes and the role cognitive schemata
and framing (sense-making) play during this process.
In this paper, we extend the cognitive framing literature by paying particular attention to the concept of cognitive
entrenchment. Dane (2010) de?ned cognitive entrenchment as a high level of stability in an actor’s domain schemata. Similarly, Sanger and Singh (2012) viewed it as the inability to unfreeze schemata that impair decision-making. Entrenchment is,
thus, a condition in which ?xed, stable frames make practices blind to changes in their environment. As schemata develop
over time, entrenchment can b…
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