Carestream Health sought to transform ordering supplies through an online system. The goal was to convert all customers to the new system, but adoption stalled at around 20%. It had failed to recognize the complexity of building and implementing a system to serve customers in 168 countries. Local differences and regulations meant it had more than 168 different ways of engaging with customers. Carestream revisited its plan to discover how to jointly modify systems of engagement and the ordering system in order to stimulate adoption. By early 2018, it had achieved 60% electronic ordering and was planning for 90%.

This text is designed to help managers who have to deal with a complex environment, and who are often presented with \"ready-made\" solutions as to how to best organize their firm, to best use information technology. The book presents a simple and attractive framework within which managers can analyze their firm's environment and characteristics, and reflect on the most appropriate way - for them - to \"put the puzzle together.\" It provides the manager and student with an integrated conceptual but pragmatic framework to analyze their situation. Courses examining the role of Information Technology in emerging organizational forms will find a well-grounded conceptual framework, illustrated with in-depth case studies. The book draws from the latest research in industrial organization, strategy, information technology, organizational theory, and leadership. It examines the individual puzzle pieces that have to be put together - strategy, structure, information technology, and leadership, and present the cases of three firms that were equally successful in putting these pieces together, while choosing pieces with dramatically different forms and adjusting them in radically different ways. The three in-depth cases included in the book are international:Oticon is a Danish firm with close to 1500 employees and is a world leader in the manufacture of hearing aids. Li & Fung is another, fist established in Canton and is an international trading company. Progressive Insurance which is the third largest insurance company in the US.

Chubb’s enterprise architecture (EA) has evolved considerably since it was reported in this journal in 2012.1 The need to continually adapt to changing technologies and demands can make a solution that worked well a few years ago unsuitable for the current business climate. Chubb moved from a difficult to enforce federated model to consistent centralized standards and shared services to enable the digital organization it sought. To make the transition, Chubb selected a leader with management and leadership skills rather than technical expertise. The major components of the new EA are target architecture and EA practice. The target architecture ,consisting of architecture principles, architecture governance, conceptual reference architectures, and emerging technology, is designed to maximize integration. EA Practice oversees five domain disciplines: IT Strategy and Governance, Application, Technical, Information, and Platform architecture. While multiple sources of business value were created by the new EA, its implementation faced important challenges in terms of loss of dedicated staff and fuzzy lines of responsibility. On the upside, Chubb is now adept at handling demand management and IT leadership development. Chubb has reached the next level of EA maturity.2

1 When Perry Rotella joined Verisk Analytics in 2009 as CIO, he wanted to increase the pace of delivering IT projects, which are critical to Verisk’s success as a data and analytics provider to such industries as insurance, healthcare, financial services, and supply chain. Rotella quickly realized that he had to find a solution that would substantially reduce the time it took to deliver to customers. The solution Rotella chose was transforming the system development process from the traditional waterfall method (where all requirements are detailed before the system is designed, coded, tested, and finally implemented) to agile development. When using agile development processes, projects are divided into “sprints” in which clients’ stories (key aspects of business functionality) are detailed, designed, coded, tested, integrated with previously developed code, and implemented as a fully functional system. Two-week sprints deliver new

Carestream Health was formed when Onex Corporation purchased Kodak's Health Group in 2007. As a part of Kodak, Carestream's IS infrastructure had been designed to align with a large and complex parent organization. This case documents how the company's IS organization was transformed to become more lean, agile and cost-effective, while making a valuable strategic contribution to Carestream's business.(1)

This article describes, assesses, and explains the growing status of indigenous knowledges (IKs) in climate science and politics. Informed by a critical environmental perspective we review the literature on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), explore the contested nature of this concept, and identify the numerous epistemological obstacles to the appropriate and respectful inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge. While we believe that TEK and Western science are complementary, the inclusion of TEK in climate science and politics has been uneven. In support of our argument, we present a framework for assessment of degrees of inclusion of TEK and apply the framework to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). We find that the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol do not account for either indigenous peoples or indigenous people's knowledges. The AR4 includes some references to indigenous peoples but they are often buried in regional chapters. The ACIA is the most inclusive of all the documents examined and represents an important starting point for the inclusion of IKs. Based on the findings of our assessment, we conclude with recommendations for moving forward with greater inclusion of IKs. WIREs Clim Change 2011 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.185 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. The word knowledges is used specifically to recognize the variation and diversity of types of knowledges held by indigenous peoples the world over. This is to convey that there is no one overriding knowledge system found among all indigenous peoples; that their knowledges are a reflection of each unique ecosystem and individual experiences within those ecosystems. This word usage is also not uncommon within the Indigenous Studies or Women's Studies literature.

Application maintenance is a critical, yet unheralded, activity in most IT organizations. Left unmanaged, maintenance costs can easily spiral out of control to consume the lion's share of the IT budget. As the saying goes, "If you don't manage maintenance, it will manage you." To explore the organizational issues of application maintenance, the authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers from a variety of different companies representing several industries. This article is based on these discussions. It first examines the root causes of application maintenance and the importance of this issue. It then reviews the sourcing-maintenance debate and explains the. maintenance trap. that has plagued IT organizations for a long time. Application support is then investigated and linked to the four types of maintenance (i.e., corrective, adaptive, preventive, and perfective). The article concludes with a number of proven strategies suggested by the focus group to enable IT organizations to manage application maintenance. rather than the other way around.

An effective enterprise architecture (EA) is much sought and not easily achieved because of competing issues that need attention. Chubb Insurance has spent ten years on its EA voyage from localized business unit architectures to a balanced common infrastructure serving both enterprise and business unit needs. Based on The Open Group Architecture Framework, the company has built procedures and a culture that has led it to a negotiated, flexible standardization. Under a business-value-oriented Chief Architect, Chubb has also become adept at handling the processes, people and politics that make such cooperative efforts so challenging. While assessing the value of an EA can be difficult, Chubb can point to multiple paybacks at both the enterprise and business unit levels. Based on this decade-long journey, the authors have identified lessons that will be of value to other organizations as they set about building their EAs.

As organizations extend the online delivery of services and data across departmental, organizational, and even jurisdictional boundaries, they must trust that they can identify and authenticate the customers, businesses, employees, and third parties using them. Traditional approaches to identity management (IDM), such as documents, clearly don’t work in the online world, yet to date there is no online equivalent of the passport or photo-id. Instead, organizations have established their own identity management practices. As a result, IT managers are looking for more holistic and standardized IDM practices that could simplify access to multiple services and enable organizations to collaborate and cooperate across global organizational boundaries, as well as keep identity information secure and private. This article explores these IDM challenges and how managers are approaching this issue. It discusses the key management components of IDM looking first at the basic concepts of IDM, its essential elements, and organizational stakeholders. Next, it examines why IDM is increasingly a business concern, in addition to an IT concern and describes the key IDM challenges facing IT managers. It then distils key principles of effective IDM and makes recommendations for how IT managers can improve on their current IDM efforts.

An important organizational trend is the practice of offering IT services via a shared services model. A shared services model is attractive to IT organizations, as it promises benefits due to centralization and/or consolidation of similar activities across the organization. For the business, a shared services model is attractive because it frees up resources by transferring responsibility for a noncore activity to another organizational body. Based on a focus group of senior IT managers from leading organizations, this article examines the current practice, in particular the reasons for adopting an IT services model, how IT shared services are structured, challenges during implementation, and benefits derived from this model once implemented. The article concludes with suggested strategies for organizations interested in creating an IT shared services organizational model.

For over 30 years, the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) has represented and promoted the interests of Inuit peoples across the circumpolar north. This transnational organization has championed a number of political, cultural, and environmental causes that are important to the Inuit, and raised the profile of Arctic and Inuit issues in multilateral forums such as the Arctic Council and the United Nations. In the words of Poul Krarup, the editor of Sermitsiaq, a leading Greenlandic newspaper: At age 30, most organizations are still trying to define their goals, but the ICC. ..is already a success: it has accomplished everything that was on its original to-do list.' Krarup argues that the ICC is still needed and he seems to envision a role for it as a government watchdog and advocate for social justice. But he also argues that the ICC should focus on economic integration and using climate change as a means of achieving unity founded on a healthy economy.2Krarup is correct in his observations that the ICC has enjoyed considerable political success. These successes have been well documented in the scholarly literature.3 Indeed, the ICC has played a prominent and influential role in multilateral discussions around contentious issues such as climate change, persistent organic pollutants, Arctic security, and regional autonomy. It has also served as forum in which representatives from lnuit regions in four different states can share information, experiences, and best practices on a range of issues that affect their communities. As such, the ICC has become the collective voice of the lnuit in their interactions with each other and with the broader global community. This voice, we have argued elsewhere, has challenged the state-centric status quo and dominant economic ideologies that shape the current world order.4 The traditional knowledge that informs its discourse has also functioned to counter western scientific constructions of the world in which we live.That being said, it would be misleading to suggest that the ICC has not encountered divisions and problems along the way. For many years, the lnuit family was separated by the geopolitical divisions of the Cold War, with the Russian Inuit only becoming active in the organization after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the early 2000s, an editorial in the Nunatsiaq News expressed concern about the rise of violent crime and suicides and criticized the ICC as an elite organization that is out of touch with the social realities of Inuit peoples.5 In the mid-2000s, the Inuit of Alaska, who were the driving force behind the creation of the ICC, seemed to lose interest in circumpolar collaboration once their goals of self-determination had been met. Most recently, the contentious issue of resource development has revealed a range of different opinions and perspectives within the organization on its future direction.6In light of these divisions, it is important that we continue to assess critically the activities and goals of this organization as it attempts to confront such new questions as resource development. In the past, the issues that the ICC has encountered have either been unifying (the threat posed by persistent organic pollutants to the Arctic), manageable (Alaska's temporary lack of interest in circumpolar collaboration), or outside its control (the Cold War). Some issues, such as the social disparities faced by Inuit peoples, have remained unresolved, but not because of a lack of effort by Inuit leaders to draw attention to them. Overall, the ICC was able to weather these issues and, in many cases, emerge stronger as a result. The question is whether the issue of resource development in an era of rapid and dramatic climate change represents a continuation of this trend or a wholly different set of problems that will be neither unifying nor manageable in the long term.Unlike previous issues, resource development is especially contentious because it reveals the tensions between, and the contested nature of, the values that inform this transnational organization. …

Globalizing organizations, outsourcing, mobile work, inter-organizational teams, innovation, and reaching out to suppliers and customers are driving today's need to improve collaboration within firms. And information technology (IT) is at the center of these trends. Businesses are also experimenting with different types of collaboration. While IT functions provide the. heavy lifting,. such as connectivity and information integrity, without which most collaboration efforts would not be effective, how new applications are implemented is often as important as the technology itself in delivering business value. This article explores IT's role in enabling collaboration in organizations, and at the same time, what IT's role should not be (i.e., what responsibilities and accountabilities should properly be the function of the business). It presents the results of research with a focus group of senior IT managers, looking first at why collaboration is becoming so important and the business value it enables. Next, it examines some of the different characteristics of collaboration and the key components of a collaboration program and at IT's role in one. It concludes that effective collaboration will not result from implementing more collaboration software. Instead, this will require a proactive and holistic strategy that integrates business goals and technology potential.

One of the most important skills all IT staff need to develop today is how to communicate effectively with business. Over and over, research has shown that if IT and business cannot speak the same language, focus on the same issues and communicate constructively, they cannot build a trusting relationship. And business is consistently more negative about IT's ability to communicate effectively than IT is. In fact, even while IT collaboration is improving, business's assessment of IT's communication skills is declining. While much attention has been paid to organizational alignment between IT and business (e.g., governance, structure) very little has been paid to the nature and impact of the social dimension of alignment, a big element of which involves communication. To explore the business and interpersonal competencies that IT staff will need in order to do their jobs effectively over the next five-seven years and what companies should be doing to help develop them, the authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers from a variety of different organizations. This paper documents the results of this discussion, integrating them with findings from the research and practitioner literature. It begins by characterizing the state of communication in the business-IT relationship and why. good communication. is becoming increasingly important. Then, it explores what is meant by. good communication. in this relationship and looks at some of the inhibitors of effective communication between these groups. Finally, it discusses the key communication skills that need to be developed by IT staff and makes recommendations for how organizations can improve or develop communication in the business-IT relationship. It concludes that good communication has both social and organizational dimensions, both of which need to be appropriately managed. It also shows that there is a. virtuous circle. of communication, with is associated with improved IT performance and perceptions of IT value.

APM is the ongoing management process of categorization, assessment and rationalization of the IT application portfolio which allows organizations to identify which applications to maintain, invest in, replace, or retire. To understand current APM strategies and practices, the authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers from a number of organizations. Results of the focus group discussion pointed to the need to develop three inter-related APM capabilities: (1) strategy and governance, (2) inventory management, and (3) reporting and rationalization. To deliver value with APM, organizations must establish all three capabilities. Experience suggests that organizations tend to start by inventorying applications and work from the "middle out" to refine their APM strategy (and how it is governed) as well as to establish efforts to rationalize their applications portfolio. As such, APM represents a process of continual refinement. Fortunately, experience also suggests that there are real benefits to be reaped from the successful development of each capability. The paper concludes with some lessons learned based on the collective experience of the members of the focus group.

Investment Spend Optimization-ISO-is a disciplined, business-driven, enterprise-wide approach to evaluating and managing IT investments. Devised by BMO Financial Group, it has been used since mid-2007 for the annual IT budget-setting process. The ISO process enables the bank to articulate the expected return on its IT investment and to closely track that return, with business managers being held accountable for IT spending. This article describes the ISO process in detail-the way projects are categorized and prioritized, the governance structure, and the annual planning process. It also describes the substantial qualitative, quantitative, and ancillary benefits BMO has obtained from adopting ISO. The article concludes by identifting the lessons other organizations can learn from BMO's experience and providing guidelines they can use for devising their own approaches to making better IT investment decisions.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) advocates for a holistic view of IT costs across the enterprise over time, grouped into a series of direct and indirect cost elements. Knowing the full costs allows organizations to make optimal decisions regarding the enhancement, retirement, renewal, and/or replacement of critical IT assets. The authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers who were asked to describe their firm’s adoption of TCO, TCO processes, tools to assist with TCO implementations, the effectiveness of these tools, and the governance practices which guide their TCO processes. The group concluded that TCO, despite facing significant implementation challenges, remains a concept worth pursuing. This article reviews current literature, summarizes the focus group discussion, and offers practical guidance for those IT managers considering adopting TCO.

While many firms have introduced knowledge management (KM) initiatives, very few are actually approaching it in a way that links KM initiatives directly to their organizational business strategy. Developing an effective KM strategy requires careful analysis and thorough planning as well as alignment with the organization's overall business strategy and with other functional strategies. To explore and understand the development and alignment of KM strategy, we conducted research using focus group methodology. Our research sheds light on the scope, development and execution of KM strategy in today's organizations and offers guidance to the academic as well as practitioner audiences

A strong business-IT relationship is critical for an organization’s effective use of IT. This relationship is affected by many factors, such as the sub-function of IT involved, the business unit involved, the management levels involved, changing expectations, and general perceptions of IT. Research suggests that little is known about what contributes to a strong relationship between IT and business, nor even about how to characterize a relationship of this complexity. To explore business-IT relations and better understand how to assess their quality, what might be done to improve them, and the factors that are critical to a successful relationship, the authors convened a focus group of senior IT managers from a variety of industries. In preparation for this day-long session, we asked all participants to prepare a presentation addressing a number of questions about the business-IT relationship in their organizations. This paper presents the results of this discussion, combining our findings with those of other researchers. It first looks at the nature of the business-IT relationship and how an effective relationship could be characterized. Then, it examines each of the four foundational elements of a strong, positive relationship in turn, making suggestions for how IT managers could strengthen them.