Summary Of Viktor Arvidsson, Jonny Halmstrom And Kalle Lyytinen

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

2. The comment, “Brilliant strategy; lousy implementation” reflects the fact that strategy formulation and strategy implementation are distinct, separable activities.

The mini-case starts with “IT is a pain in the neck,” which is a wrong notion that most of the business managers have in an organization. The history of IT-business relationships in most of the organizations shows that there is a huge gap between both sides which is getting better over a period of time. Today, managers know the fact that it is the people, technology and information that realizes the value of a company and everytime IT cannot be blamed for everything. The days have gone when IT was looked at as the sole responsibility for a company’s growth or downfall. IT processes along with the

The literature research reviewed in this paper attempts to address the topic of strategy implementation. The paper tries to establish an academic case for previously researched material on this subject by reflecting on the diverse views published in the literature. The different views expressed combine to formulate research to establish relevance as well as importance in this step of the Strategic Management Process. In order to identify and discuss existing data and developments in strategy implementation, over twelve articles in scholarly academic journals containing “strategy implementation” or “strategy execution” as the key words were

McKeen, J. and Heather, S. (2011) IT Strategy - Issues and Practices. 2nd Edition. ISBN-10: 0132145669. Boston: Prentice Hall.

Q：Large numbers of companies are using their information systems as a strategic tool to improve their competitive advantage. Choose one of these companies (Toyota or Wal-Mart) and prepare an essay of 1500 words on: a) how information systems are used strategically by the company to gain a competitive advantage b) discuss if it is possible for the company to maintain this advantage in the future.

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

Mintzberg in ‘Crafting strategy’ promotes the idea that prescriptive strategy ‘misguides organisations that embrace it unreservedly.’[p66]. He pushes the idea that crafting strategy is a more effective representation of strategy. ‘Craft evokes traditional skills perfection through the mastery of detail....developed through experience and commitment.’[p66]. This is

Many organizations are working with large amounts of data and important information that can be detrimental to the survival of their business, and organizations typically rely on information systems to manage and carry out their operations. Information systems can be described as an integrated set of components used for storing, collecting and processing data for providing information, digital products and knowledge (IMGI, 2006). For this paper, the strategic analysis decisions along with what we may need to watch out for pertaining URL for the IT field is discussed, along with the impact that these decisions will have on the company. Furthermore, the potential changes in IT related to innovation and organizational process is also reviewed,

Given the rise of competition in the modern business industry, it is essential for firms to apply strategic use of information system (IS) to achieve competitive advantage (CA).

A strategy, according to Robbins and Barnwell (2002, p. 139) is “the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary to achieve the organisation’s goals”.

Strategy was shaped from the top but also from every person in the company as she adapted the deliberate strategy to her work. The existence of an emergent strategy led to the question of how top management could influence it (through, among other tools, MCS). The concepts of interactive and boundary systems (Simons 1995)—with the purpose of managing these ‘‘unexpected’’ decisions—captured this new role for MCS. If day-to-day actions modify top management deliberate strategy, then why should top management go all the way to formulating it? The answer to this question led to the next step in the evolution of our understanding of the strategic process. Research suggested that top management does not formulate a deliberate strategy that is then randomly mixed with the emergent strategy. Rather, top management knows that the deliberate strategy is never implemented; instead of trying to force it, top management focuses on defining the guidelines that shape the emergent strategy (Burgelman 2002). The process of setting up these guidelines to induce certain strategic behavior is captured in the idea of intended strategic actions (lower left quadrant). These guidelines reflect top management’s objectives rather than prescribe what the organization should do. This idea was further refined through the observation that emergent strategy included two very different types of outcomes. Often emergent strategy evolved

Chandler (1962) defined strategy as “The determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources for carrying out these goals”. Strategy is related to long-term goals, policies and major issues of the business which determines the success or failure of the organisation. In simple words, strategy is something which accomplishes the firm’s goals. Strategy is about being different from competitors by performing better (Magretta, 2002). A strategy of an organisation should not be changed very often and should be planned for long-term because strategy needs a period of consolidation. Businesses follow strategy to have a competitive advantage over the other firms in the market.

Practices are the approaches, tools, methods, frameworks and routines that practitioners utilise as they ‘do’ strategy. These range from familiar forms of interaction such as Shankland’s approach of talking directly to the customer, to more complex ideas. Obviously, they also include strategic models and planning procedures of the sort. Shankland uses a more human approach to strategy, listening to the market and responding via the strategy, whereas Welch uses a strict five step program to answer important questions before execution.

The strategy functions as a problem-solving tool of members’ performance towards IT/IS in current organizational culture. Some of the problems involve lack of comprehension by members of their duties in IT/IS management and innovation, also non-optimal implementation of IT/IS infrastructures. Accordingly, it is essential for organization leaders to develop enhanced communication with their members by support from adequate IT system,