Information Technology & Organ

This book discusses a holistic approach to organizations. It explores alternative organizational forms and work practices, the use and availability of information systems, evolving skill requirements, the innovative power of information technology, the creation of knowledge, and the reshaping of industrial sectors. Presents forward-looking, exciting topics. Breaks the boundaries of functionally-based, overly deterministic information literature.

Information Technology and Organizational Transformation is arguably the key challenge facing corporate executives and business school academics alike as we approach the millennium. Much that is superficial has been written on the topic in recent years. The siren call of the more popular literature in this area - seductive in the simplicity of the message of radically improved business performance brought about by IT and process re-engineering - has led to the unwary foundering on the rocks of the realpolitik associated with organizational change. But organizational innovation is possible - as the case studies included in this book amply demonstrate. While 'best practice' solutions may be illusory, the examples given herein, taken together with the fruits of research undertaken by leading academics from Continental Europe, Scandinavia, North America and the UK, provide key lessons that one ignores at one's peril. This is a highly important contribution to knowledge. Bringing together such key themes as organizational learning, knowledge management, IT and business strategy alignment, the management of change, inter-organizational communications, corporate innovation and business process change, this book provides significant learning for those willing to challenge much of the received wisdom on this fascinating topic.

Bob Galliers is internationally renowned for his leading edge work on IT and organizational change. Chairman of Warwick Business School, UK, he is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Walter Baets is Dean of Research at the recently established Euro-Arab Management School, Granada, Spain. Their transdisciplinary, cross-cultural and reflective approach to this most key of management topics makes this volume essential reading for those charged with studying and/or leading the visioning and implementation of organizational change on the back of IT.