MIT Sloan Management Review

Corporate Strategy, Management of Technology and Innovation

Computer-Aided Architects: A Case Study of IT and Strategic Change

By Philip W. Yetton, Kim D. Johnston and Jane F. Craig

July 15, 1994

IN TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF HOW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) IS APPLIED, A FIRM DEVELOPS A BUSINESS STRATEGY, THEN CHOOSES THE structure and management processes, aligns IT, and ensures that employees are trained and their roles are well designed. The authors describe and analyze a case in which business transformation occurred along a different, almost reverse, path to fit, through the incremental adoption of IT. At Flower and Samios, a small architectural firm, business strategy emerged gradually and was an outcome, rather than a driver, of change. The case shows how individual mastery, organizational learning, and the management of risk are critical components of a strategic change in which IT becomes an integral part of a firm’s core business processes.

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Changes in business strategy usually precede structural adaptation, according to predominant theories, with strategy causing a realignment of a firm’s management processes.1 While there has been some debate on the degree of strategic choice,2 this is the dominant view, both descriptively and normatively. It is also a perspective that researchers on the strategic management of information technology (IT) have adopted, implicitly or explicitly. For example, the widely cited MIT Management in the 1990s framework assumes that a firm’s business strategy drives the subsequent alignment and fit of organization structure, management processes, individual skills and roles, and technology.3

Here we present a case study of the strategic application of information technology in which a very different process took place — almost the reverse of the conventional, rational models. Rather than beginning with strategy formulation, the process began with the tactical and incremental adoption of technology. In turn, that became the catalyst for change in individual roles and skills, followed by structural adaptation, and, later, changes in the firm’s management processes, which embedded and reinforced organizational learning. From the new configuration, a business strategy and vision began to emerge, as a range of new strategic options became apparent. In this way, the IT strategy and subsequent business transformation gradually evolved out of tactical responses to operational needs. In... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

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