Ict Strategy: Does A Federated Organisational Structure

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Signature: Nathan van Rooyen

ICT Strategy: does a federated organisational structure

influence effective development and execution thereof?

Research proposal presented to the

Department of Information Systems

University Of Cape Town

By

Nathan van Rooyen

In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

Part-time Information Systems Honours 2006

Contents

1. Background 3

2. Objectives 3

3. Research question and hypothesis 4

4. Framework 4

5. Plan to deliver thesis 4

6. Planned Bibliography 5

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