Models of IT Growth

The influential evolutionary models of IT growth in the organisation, for example, Gibson and Nolan (1974) and Nolan (1979) offered a useful starting point for understanding IT assimilation, but they had little to offer in terms of guidance on how to identify strategic information systems opportunities. Whitmore (1985) went so far as to say that their continued use as guiding frameworks through into the early 1980s had actually inhibited the strategic use of IS/IT. Their predictive capability did not extend to the new technologies and new applications, which quickly became available. Organisations, struggling to keep pace with these changes whilst at the same time trying to forge links between isolated areas of automation based on different technologies across separate functions, found that the transition to integration was now much more complex than that described by these early evolutionary models. Their focus was on ‘the development of DP/IS management’ rather than ‘the exploitation of DP/IS in the enterprise’ (Ward, Griffiths and Whitmore, 2003).
Subsequent research and theorising through the 1980s has produced models of IT which focus more clearly on why the movement from automation to integration was so difficult; its crucial importance as a platform for transformation; and, in view of the great costs and timescales involved, the need for flexible strategic planning. For example, successive refinements of the Three Era model (DP, MIS, SIS), three-role model of IT: automating, informating, transforming; and the MIT90s models, in particular Venkatraman’s (1991) five levels of IT-induced business transformation model, were especially useful. Since the transition involves a fundamental shift in emphasis from managing computers to managing information systems, they highlight the importance of a clear understanding of the nature of information and the current and future information needs of the business and the organisation in relation to the competitive environment. They also emphasise the need for a more holistic view which takes in all aspects of the organisation, its environments, the IT/ IS applications and their interrelationships.

The terms used; ‘shifting through stages, eras, phases, or levels’ of IT use and development; suggest an ordered progression, a time-based sequence of events, which is regarded as problematic in these models as in the earlier models. However, most stress that their intention is to indicate a phased expansion of the focus of concern to include another area of IT/IS activity rather than a staged change from one activity to the next. The MIT90s research summarised the main challenge to management in the 1990s as: the creation of flexible organisational structures which would enable companies to deal with an increasingly fast-changing, complex and competitive world. Information technology which enables the integration of business activities would play a key role as it could be used in the development of new structures which would facilitate the communication and flow of new ideas, and in the development of new business opportunities.

It stressed that the shift to this kind of organisation would be difficult because it involves changing long-established business processes, IT systems, structures, strategies, roles and cultures. Achieving a successful transition to IT-enabled business transformation would require not just the technological know-how to develop a robust IT/IS infrastructure but also an understanding of the dynamics of change as it affected all aspects of the organisation and its external environments. It highlighted the need for skilful management of the change process and investment in people, pinpointing the failure to provide these in the past as root causes for the lack of impact of IT on economic performance and productivity. The MIT90s Research Framework emphasises the central role that management processes (strategic planning, budgeting, resources planning, etc.) play in the alignment of business and IT strategies in the organisation, and in maintaining organisational equilibrium. Every component is influenced by external and internal environments, and changes which affect one, affect all. Changes made in one area without consideration of their likely effects on the others upset the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ and threaten survival and growth.

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