Information for Competitive Positioning: How Does the UK Compare?
| Pages | 20-25 |
| Date | 01 July 1991 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579110008922 |
| Published date | 01 July 1991 |
| Author | Roger Tomlin |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Information for
Competitive
Positioning:
How Does
the
UK
Compare?
Roger Tomlin
20 INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & DATA SYSTEMS 91,7
Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 91 No. 7, 1991, pp. 20-25,
© MCB University Press Limited, 0263-5577
T
he changing role of information technology
in almost all organisations is likely to
become more profound in the future.
British
Airways
is an excellent example of
how
IT
has
been
blended into the fabric of both day-to-day management
of
the airline and also the strategic direction of the business
and it can be regarded as one of Britain's best success
stories.
However, the evidence we have from our research,
involving 800 major European corporations, is that,
compared with most successful European users of IT,
information technology does not sit very comfortably in
most British boardrooms.
We
found evidence that suggests
that something like 75 per cent of British companies do
not display the right sort of intellectual attitudes to gain
the full benefit from IT which they must
gain
in
the future.
Research also found that the changing role of IT which
has been taking place in the last few years has, in most
organisations, moved to centre stage and is going to
become more profound in the future. For companies in
Britain to be successful
in
the new European environment
they have got to make better use of IT than they have
done in the past.
These are the main findings that have come from a
research project completed recently. Further work has
been carried out to see if these findings are valid or can
be changed but we have found only information that
supports them even more. Companies have been
discovered which have invested
in
changing their culture,
recognising that getting the corporate culture of top
organisations right is vitally important if the whole
investment
in
IT
in
the future is to be successful. But this
change of culture can be a long and difficult
job.
Sir John
Harvey-Jones, who contributed to the work, summarised
this by saying: "Producing a corporate culture that
encourages successful change can be
a
long haul of three
to five years or more. Nevertheless companies have every
chance of getting ahead of competitors if they
do
this,
while
staying in touch with advanced IT ideas''.
To give a background to the research, the project was
spread over three years, that
is, 1987
to
1989.
It involved
contributions from
800
senior executives in France, Italy,
West Germany, Britain and Switzerland. The objectives
were threefold: first, to assess and
provide
factual evidence
on how the role and influence of IT in business was
changing and would evolve in the 1990s; second, to see
how different management attitudes to IT affect the
success which companies have obtained and to try to
identify those characteristics which differentiate the most
successful from the rest; third, to produce some reports
and presentations which actually portray the results
constructively so that companies can use the results to
improve the quality of their IT management.
The project was sponsored by the Amdahl Corporation
to help its customers to manage IT as effectively as
possible.
A
multinational team was employed, comprising
the author; a colleague who is the general manager from
Cologne University Research and Consulting Division,
specialising in automation, IT and business organisation;
the president of
his
own consulting organisation
in
Milan;
and someone similar from
Paris.
Twelve
group discussions
with IT directors in various countries were held, both to
identify the issues to start with and
to
review the findings.
Six-hundred-and-thirty-five different questionnaires,
containing information on over 100 characteristics which
we felt were appropriate to culture and management
attitudes, were analysed. Approximately 50 chairmen or
chief executives of
large
corporations were interviewed.
The role of IT in business has been changing ever since
its introduction some 40 years ago. In the latter part of
The author acknowledges the assistance of the Amdahl
Corporation. This article
was
originally published in
Journal of
Information Technology
and
is reprinted with kind permission
of the publisher.
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