Information Technology and Organizational Transformation. Innovation for the 21st Century Organization

This is a collection of 12 papers exploring important issues of information technology (IT) and organizational transformation.

The volume starts out with an introductory chapter by the two editors, Galliers and Baets. They believe that existing literature on the topic treats complex issues of IT and organizational transformation in overly simplified ways. Accordingly, a main assumption of the book is that multidisciplinary cooperation and descriptive accounts of actual experiences could facilitate the learning process of people working with IT and organizational transformation. Framing the contributions of the book, the editors introduce a model, called “the circle of forces”, which describes “forces for the consideration of IT and organizational transformation” (p. 7). The model comprises four components: information technology, corporate strategy, organizational behavior, and cognitive psychology. Even though “this is an artificial boundary” which “reduces the value of the analysis”, the authors maintain they “had to limit the scope” of the work (p. 6).

The first part of the volume is called “starting afresh”. It aims to have the reader “rethink” the nature of IT and organizational transformation. Scarbrough starts out by reporting a case study of the link between IT‐based innovations and the strategic needs of the business. The empirical findings of the study seem to question “the common‐sense assumption that the organizational deployment of IT is only driven by economic forces of competition and globalization” (p. 34). The paper by Bannon is concerned with computer‐supported cooperative work (CSCW). Bannon introduces the field of CSCW, discusses different approaches to understand work, e.g. ethnography, and summarizes the research on the adoption of groupware technologies in organizations. In chapter 3, Bjørn‐Andersen and Turner describe “the metamorphosis” of a Danish company. They relate what happened in this particular case to business process re‐engineering (BPR) and CSCW.

The objective of the second part of the book is to discuss organizational learning and its relation to the use of IT. In chapter 4, Ciborra and Andreu introduce a model that describes the process of turning resources into core capabilities. They relate the model to the use of IT in organizations, discussing how the use of IT could be turned into a core capability of the firm. Baets, in chapter 5, discusses various aspects of business processes, learning, and management. In particular, Baets is concerned with how “mind sets” can be mapped and measured, and the possibility of using neural networks to facilitate these processes by means of IT. Reponen, in the following chapter, discusses the relation between learning and the strategic planning of information systems, arguing for interactive, learning‐based approaches. Some empirical evaluations of the suggestions are presented.

Part 3 of the book, “Innovations, networks and corporate identity”, aims at “turn[ing] to the wider questions of innovation, interorganizational systems and IT architectures that may support and enhance and organization′s development” (p. 151). In chapter 7, Pennings presents quantitative research on how innovations have affected the performance of banks. Chapter 8, written by O’Callaghan, is concerned with how EDI may affect business processes. The literature on this particular topic is summarized, and a case is presented for the purpose of illustration. In the last chapter of the third part, Baets and Venugopal discuss the ways people and organizations learn, and what implications this may have on IT architectures. They also review a set of systems that may provide support for learning, and suggest a conceptual framework of intelligent systems in learning.

Galliers’ reflections on BPR start out part 4 of the book, called “IT and organizational change”. The chapter by Galliers investigates the relation between BPR and organizational change, business strategy and IT. In the following chapter, Turner explores the particular roles and opportunities of IT in BPR, and the role of IT staff in such change programs. Chapter 12, written by Meester and Post, is a story of how BPR was applied in an organization and what lessons learned emerged from the project. In the last part of the book, “success and failure in corporate transformation initiatives”, Pettigrew discusses change programs in industry. He covers topics such as the rhetoric of such programs, the concepts and metaphors used, etc.

My overall impression is that this is a classical information systems book, with solid writings and good arguments, but also rather conservative and not really concerned with the technology or its use; models and concepts seem to matter most. The topic of the volume is very timely; bearing in mind the vast amount of resources spent on change programs in industry, and the many failures. Whether or not the growing amount of consulting literature on the topic is responsible for these failures is perhaps not obvious. Nevertheless, empirically‐based in‐detail analyses of what IT and organizational transformation might be, is clearly needed. This makes some of the chapters of this book very relevant. Chapter 1, by Scarbrough, is one example. He reports empirical findings of how some UK banks have tried to link IT innovations to business strategy. This is a topic often dealt with in the consulting literature, however we do not know very much about how this actually is done in practice. For this reason, but also because of the results reported by Scarbrough, this chapter is very good. I also like the chapter by Pettigrew, which to a large extent is a reflective and eye‐opening analysis of consulting. Clearly, many practitioners would learn a lot from reading it.

The introduction of the book promises descriptive results of multidisciplinary research on IT and organizational transformation. As opposed to mainstream contributions on the topic, characterized as superficial and prescriptive, the objective is in‐depth descriptions of real cases. With this in mind, the so‐called “circle of forces” mentioned previously does not really make sense. To me, the problems of existing literature do not imply the need for yet another abstract model, but rather empirical studies and descriptive results. Another weakness of the book is that it leaves out of consideration some of the existing literature on technology and organization. For what reason is actor‐network theory, the social construction of technology, etc., not used in this book? I also had problems with the seeming similarities between the book and the literature it criticizes. Consider, for instance, how Davenport (Process Innovation, 1993, Harvard Business School Press, Boston) describes the implementation of business processes, derived from corporate strategy: “As elsewhere in the book, both human/organizational and technological factors are considered” (p. 165). Is not this just another way of describing “the circle of forces?” The chapter by Bjørn‐Andersen and Turner is another example; similar stories have been told elsewhere, e.g. by Tom Peters in Liberation Management (1992, Alfred A. Knopf, New York).

In the introduction of the book, the objective is defined as facilitating learning by providing the reader with descriptive results of real cases. Unfortunately, the objective is not achieved. Most contributions are theoretical, and the empirical ones are not very detailed. The lack of empirical work is unfortunate. However, the main problem for me is the high level of abstraction of the book. Put simply, there are too many theoretical explorations of concepts and models. Explorations of the relation between, for instance, “individual and organizational learning” (chapter 5) tend to be very abstract and require other concepts to be introduced. Even though the argumentation is clear and logical, the high level of abstraction makes it virtually impossible to map the reasoning to a real context.

Because information technology and organizational transformation is a solid piece of classical information systems research on a very central topic, I believe many IS researchers will find the book important. Nevertheless, I would have preferred more empirically‐oriented research and less abstract reasoning. My guess is that practitioners may have the same concern.