MIT Sloan Management Review

Management of Technology and Innovation

 

Plugging into Strategic Partnerships: The Critical IS Connection

By John C. Henderson

April 15, 1990

GIVEN THE INCREASING COMPLEXITY of the technological infrastructure, there is a critical need to build effective working relationships between line managers and information systems managers. This paper explores the concept of building partnerships as a management strategy. Using interviews with executives, the author focuses both on external partnerships (relationships between managers in separate organizations) and on internal partnerships (relationships between line managers and information systems managers in the same organization) to create a descriptive model.

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IN TODAY’S COMPETITIVE WORLD, the effective use of information technology (IT) as an element of a competitive strategy is critical. In the literature there are numerous examples of how organizations have used information technology to build and sustain new relationships with suppliers or customers and, as a result, have achieved a significant competitive advantage.1 A common theme in these examples is the use of information technology to improve coordination of the activities across organizations that are critical to delivering goods and services to a market.

However, it is often noted that these organizations did not gain their advantage by virtue of the information technology alone. Foremost McKesson radically changed both its internal operations and its relationships with customers in an effort to gain a competitive advantage over large, integrated pharmaceutical companies.2 Rockart and Short argue that effective internal integration across value-added functions is a key to interorganizational information systems (IS) implementation.3 Others have noted that the use of information technology linkages between organizations may only “speed up the mess” if a fundamental restructuring of the nature of work in organizations is not achieved.4,5

To the extent that these observations are correct, senior managers must now learn to integrate information technology into every aspect of their organizations.6 One approach... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

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