Chief information officers are being held to advanced standards as information technology becomes critical within large, global organizations. In addition to streamlining business processes, reducing enterprise costs and enhancing work force effectiveness, top management also wants the IT section to be a strategic business partner -to forecast the business impact of emerging technologies, direct the development of new IT-enabled products and services, and drive adoption of innovative technologies that identify the organization from adversaries. Although standardized procedures and organizational charts can be helpful, the authors find that these conventional tools are not flexible enough to support the types of external and internal cooperation and partnerships that big, global IT organizations need to optimize value.
The secret to providing both operational excellence and innovation, they argue, will be to enable innovative options to emerge out of the blue through unplanned and informal interactions between individuals who see issues from diverse perspective. Predicated on their research at the Monsanto and 11 other big businesses, the writers contend that CIOs who learn to balance formal and informal structures can create world-wide IT organizations that are progressive and more efficient than organizations that rely mostly on formal mechanisms. The writers found that organizational network analysis provides an useful methodology for identifying targeted steps to align networks with strategic imperatives, and for helping executives evaluate more extensive patterns of informal networks between people, teams, functions and organizations.
The Collaborative Organization How to Make Employee Networks Really Work case study solution
PUBLICATION DATE: October 01, 2010 PRODUCT #: SMR367-PDF-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS
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