IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ercisw/12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The IT strategy divide: Professional practice and academic debate

Author

Listed:
  • Teubner, Rolf Alexander
  • Pellengahr, Alexander
  • Mocker, Martin

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) strategy is a top-priority issue in practice. However, despite its practical relevance, research on IT strategy has been limited so far. With respect to the definition of an IT strategy and its scope, there are a number of ad hoc recommendations and a few conceptual models with little scientific backing. In particular, latest research indicates a gap between the academic discussion on IT strategy and how IT strategy is perceived in practice. Taking this as a motivation, our research sets out to uncover in more detail the concerns and the notions of IT strategy prevalent in practice. This paper reports on the results of a qualitative research project which included interviews with IT strategy professionals from twelve mid-size to large companies in German speaking countries. It compares the experts' IT strategy practice with the concerns and perceptions that dominate research and the academic discussion. Our study uncovers striking differences between the academic debate on IT strategy and the concerns IT strategy professional look upon as being important. First of all, we found that professionals are concerned with IT strategy on two different levels, the corporate level and the business unit level strategy. Academics, in contrast, look at IT strategy mostly from a business unit and departmental level. Irrespective of the differences in the level of IT strategy, the strategy concerns focused on in academia differ substantially from those that our professionals were most interested in. The focus of the academic discussion is on IT-based competitive advantages and stresses the role of information as strategic resources, while practitioners are most concerned with decisions on IT infrastructure, IT architecture and standards. The paper at hand does not only analyse the differences but also takes a closer look at the reasoning of academics and professionals for looking upon certain IT issues as 'strategic'. Both, the IT strategy concerns raised by our professionals and the rationales used provide valuable input for future research and theory development.

Suggested Citation

  • Teubner, Rolf Alexander & Pellengahr, Alexander & Mocker, Martin, 2012. "The IT strategy divide: Professional practice and academic debate," ERCIS Working Papers 12, University of Münster, European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ercisw:12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/58413/1/717296210.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy R. Kayworth & Debabroto Chatterjee & V. Sambamurthy, 2001. "Theoretical Justification for IT Infrastructure Investments," Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ), IGI Global, vol. 14(3), pages 5-14, July.
    2. Mary C. Lacity & Leslie P. Willcocks, 2009. "Information Systems and Outsourcing," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-59483-8.
    3. Wanda J. Orlikowski & Jack J. Baroudi, 1991. "Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 1-28, March.
    4. Leslie P. Willcocks & Mary C. Lacity, 2009. "The Practice of Outsourcing," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-24084-1.
    5. Irwin T.J. Brown, 2004. "Testing and Extending Theory in Strategic Information Systems Planning Through Literature Analysis," Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ), IGI Global, vol. 17(4), pages 20-48, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rolf Teubner, 2013. "Information Systems Strategy," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 5(4), pages 243-257, August.
    2. Teubner, Rolf Alexander & Pellengahr, Alexander Robert, 2013. "State of and perspectives for IS strategy research: A discussion paper," ERCIS Working Papers 16, University of Münster, European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS).
    3. Stockhinger, Jan & Teubner, Alexander, 2019. "How digitalization drives the IT/IS strategy agenda," ERCIS Working Papers 31, University of Münster, European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matilda Alexandrova, 2015. "Risk Factors in IT Outsourcing Partnerships: Vendors’ Perspective," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 16(5), pages 747-759, October.
    2. repec:vnm:wpdman:77 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Williams, Christopher & Durst, Susanne, 2019. "Exploring the transition phase in offshore outsourcing: Decision making amidst knowledge at risk," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 460-471.
    4. Jolanta Sloniec, 2021. "A Longitudinal Analysis of IT Outsourcing in Large Polish Organizations," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 2), pages 439-452.
    5. Manoj Thomas & Daniela Costa & Tiago Oliveira, 2016. "Assessing the role of IT-enabled process virtualization on green IT adoption," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 693-710, August.
    6. Breunig, Christoph & Kummer, Michael & Ohnemus, Jörg & Viete, Steffen, 2016. "IT outsourcing and firm productivity: Eliminating bias from selective missingness in the dependent variable," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-092, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Jeremiah, Rupin, 2017. "DO FIRMS INNOVATE ABROAD? - The Case of Swedish R&D in India," SSE Working Paper Series in Business Administration 2017:4, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 07 Dec 2017.
    8. Nils Urbach & Tobias Würz, 2012. "How to Steer the IT Outsourcing Provider," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 4(5), pages 247-259, October.
    9. Chi, Maomao & Zhao, Jing & George, Joey F. & Li, Yanhui & Zhai, Shanshan, 2017. "The influence of inter-firm IT governance strategies on relational performance: The moderation effect of information technology ambidexterity," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 43-53.
    10. Roman Beck & Katharina Schott, 2012. "The Interplay of Project Control and Interorganizational Learning: Mitigating Effects on Cultural Differences in Global, Multisource ISD Outsourcing Projects," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 4(4), pages 183-192, August.
    11. Peterson, Helen, 2016. "Merging management ideals in Swedish IT offshoring," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 97-105.
    12. Alireza Shahrasbi & Mehdi Shamizanjani & M. H. Alavidoost & Babak Akhgar, 2017. "An Aggregated Fuzzy Model for the Selection of a Managed Security Service Provider," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(03), pages 625-684, May.
    13. Tjader, Youxu & May, Jerrold H. & Shang, Jennifer & Vargas, Luis G. & Gao, Ning, 2014. "Firm-level outsourcing decision making: A balanced scorecard-based analytic network process model," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(PC), pages 614-623.
    14. Elitzur, Ramy & Gavious, Arieh & Wensley, Anthony K.P., 2012. "Information systems outsourcing projects as a double moral hazard problem," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 379-389.
    15. Fuqiang Lu & Yanli Hu & Hualing Bi & Min Huang & Meng Zhao, 2018. "An Auction Approach for Cost and Schedule Management of IT Outsourcing Project," Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 35(05), pages 1-23, October.
    16. Vincent Cho & Aman Chan, 2015. "An integrative framework of comparing SaaS adoption for core and non-core business operations: An empirical study on Hong Kong industries," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 629-644, June.
    17. Benedikt Martens & Frank Teuteberg, 2012. "Decision-making in cloud computing environments: A cost and risk based approach," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 871-893, September.
    18. Nicolas Jullien & Klaas-Jan Stol & James D Herbsleb, 2019. "A Preliminary Theory for Open Source Ecosystem Micro-economics," Post-Print hal-02127185, HAL.
    19. Emilio Alvarez-Suescun, 2010. "Combining transaction cost and resource-based insights to explain IT implementation outsourcing," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 12(5), pages 631-645, November.
    20. Christian Peukert, 2012. "External Technology Supply and Client-Side Innovation," International Studies in Entrepreneurship, in: David B. Audretsch & Erik E. Lehmann & Albert N. Link & Alexander Starnecker (ed.), Technology Transfer in a Global Economy, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 161-184, Springer.
    21. Arduini, Davide & Denni, Mario & Lucchese, Matteo & Nurra, Alessandra & Zanfei, Antonello, 2013. "The role of technology, organization and contextual factors in the development of e-Government services: An empirical analysis on Italian Local Public Administrations," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 177-189.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ercisw:12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilmuede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.