Success and Pitfalls of Information Technology Management

Citation

Parry, F. (2000), "Success and Pitfalls of Information Technology Management", The Electronic Library, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 448-469. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2000.18.6.448.10

“Success and pitfalls of information technology management” contains case studies of the management, implementation and implications of IT in various organisations. The target readership is primarily MBA students and research departments within business schools.

The foreword makes a strong pitch for the effectiveness of case studies in MBA programmes – leading edge practice described by those in the field and theory building from a wide range of IT applications. There are certainly a wide variety of case studies on offer here. Just about every organisational sector is represented. Education has chapters on a project at the Royal Canadian University, the integration of library, telecommunications and computing services in a university, and information systems in a scientific library. Research institutes include the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. There is a report from three Boston hospitals. Business organisations include Northern Steel and Telecom Eireann. In the field of social welfare a remotely managed youth employment project using Internet technologies is also studied. Other chapters deal with telecommuting in its various manifestations – remote working and distance learning. In addition to this, each study has a separate and quite distinctive emphasis – technological, procedural, human issues, staffing, etc. It is this breadth and depth of focus which make the collection a valuable resource for students.

The case studies are refreshingly candid. Students will be able to learn not only from the successful cases but also from some of the horror stories that surely abound in any organisation. There is even a chapter entitled “Setting up to fail”, which deals with the “failing to plan = planning to fail” syndrome, although in this instance the organisation, which is real enough, has had its name changed for fairly obvious reasons.

Each chapter has a scene‐setting executive summary from the compiler which attempts to demonstrate why a particular case is noteworthy. This notwithstanding, I would have appreciated a longer, more general introductory chapter which dealt with some of the recurrent issues.

This is a useful and diverse – though costly – collection of case studies which guarantees to grab the interest of most of its readers at least some of the time.