Best It Practice

The Review of Business Information Systems

Volume 6, Number 2

IT Investment Strategy And IT Infrastructure Services

Hsin-Ginn Hwang, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Robert Yeh, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Houn-Gee Chen, National Tsing Hwa University, Taiwan James J. Jiang, University of Central Florida Gary Klein, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Abstract Organizations invest in information technology infrastructure for a variety of reasons. One dimension describing the investment strategy is the intention of achieving cost savings versus the intention to remain flexible and responsive to the marketplace. Of interest is the relationship between this cost-flexibility dimension and the extent to which services are provided as part of the firmwide infrastructure. A survey of CIOs reveals that organizations emphasizing cost tend to have less investment in firmwide infrastructure across a breadth of service types than those promoting flexibility. This implies that organizations pursuing a flexible strategy will provide a broader base of services that are common to all groups within the organization. Firms using a cost-based strategy tend to provide less infrastructure leaving many of the services incomplete or up to individual business units within the organization.

Introduction

T

he rapid evolution of information technology (IT) has dramatically reshaped the competitive environment of businesses. Many firms have undergone tremendous stress as they attempt to keep competitive amidst the constantly changing stream of technologies (Markus and Soh, 1993). Organizations, large and small, are taking the advantage of technology initiatives to drive changes and improve operations, productivity, as well as bottom-line performance. The perspective reflecting this change is that IT not only exists to support the enterprise but also must be integrated into the organization (Stratopoulos and Dehning, 2000). Therefore, businesses...