Achieving a Coordination Framework of Strategy and Information Technology

Because technology innovation has changed the way people do business significantly, adopting information technology (IT) for strategic planning has become a vital issue for today's business management. However, most studies seemed to focus more on technology than on information in IT. Unfortunately, the way technology alters the business model is not as much as the way information changes an organization's managerial concept. The impact is beyond marketing issues and is very important to an organization's managerial philosophy. This study adopts a strategy concept called the co-alignment principle (Olsen, West, & Tse, 1998), to investigate how an information system (IS) could be designed to enhance and process the information flows involved in the processes of strategy formulation and implementation. It places IT implementation issues directly at the heart of strategic management for research. Using qualitative research approach with a single case-study method employed, 11 recommendations and 10 propositions were obtained to address and handle the newly discovered 7 key issues for strategy formulation and implementation. The study also exemplified that when these issues are being handled by an IS properly designed, a coordination strategic IT framework that goes beyond the thinking of cost saving and productivity increase is achieved as well.