1.Background
Virtually all business entities employ information and communication technologies {ICT} in one form or another. Larger organisation may find it near impossible to do business without ICT and as part of their strategic growth plans should have a strategy for how ICT will be used by the organisation. There are well-documented statistics of the high failure rates of ICT projects and many case studies and examples of disastrous decisions made by organisations around the deployment of ICT that lead to no business value being realised from investment in ICT.There are a many definitions of what an organisation is and various options are available for organisations to structure and organise it.
One-man organisations, partnerships, companies, etc are all forms of organisations, which may be structured along function, geographic locations, matrices, etc. The type of organisation and the way in which an organisation is structured could be a factor that influences the development and execution of an ICT strategy.
2. Objectives
The objective of this study will be to ascertain the impact/influence of federally structured organisations, i.
e. an organisation with near autonomous business units, but with a centralised executive leadership, have on the effective development and execution of ICT strategy. The study will conclude whether the impact/influence is positive, negative or negligible.The study will be limited to companies in the Western Cape and to companies that the part-time IS Honours students work for.
The federated organisation will be limited to four financial services companies that operate in similar ways in similar markets as competitors and that collectively constitute more than 60% of the market share.
3. Research question and hypothesis
Question: ICT Strategy: does a federated organisational structure influence effective development and execution thereof?Hypothesis: the effectiveness of strategic ICT planning isa) reduced by federated structures as opposed to other organisational structures and,b) negatively correlated to autonomy, i.e. as the degree of autonomy of business units increase, the degree of effectiveness of ICT planning decreases
4. Framework
The paper will start off by reviewing the theoretical organisational structures and touch on the manner in which ICT is used in organisations. Business value of ICT will be discussed as the measure of effectiveness of execution of ICT strategy within organisations. This may be one of the limitations of the study as business value firstly can be illustrated in various ways and secondly may be tangible or intangible.
A survey will be conducted through members of the IS Honours class into their organisations that will classify their organisation as operating with a particular structure and then ascertain subjectively from within the organisation whether ICT strategy is developed and executed effectively. The data generated by the survey will then be analysed to prove or disprove the two central hypotheses.
