MIS Research Center Seminar Series
8:30 AM - 11:15 AM
1st Floor Auditorium, Carlson School of Management

Abstract

IT managers are increasingly recognizing the need to increase the level of meaningful participation by managers in the rest of the business. The conventional model- where IT groups assessed or polled users for business requirements and made decisions about the allocation of the IT budget against these needs is increasingly recognized as being short-lived. It is clear to most IT groups as well as discerning clients that this leads to the IT group taking on too much risk in the organization by making decisions on behalf of their clients. IT is also clear that changes in the business that IT groups often have no way to sense or anticipate, invalidate key assumptions such as transaction volumes and system usage, lead to complex information system efforts being viewed as not meeting expectations and being unsatisfactory. This has often been viewed as a situation where IT groups are not 'aligned' to the business - calling for greater attention to IT-Business alignment.

In our view, we believe that the notion of alignment, though a very relevant concept is more appropriately viewed as reflecting the quality of the IT outcomes than a means to enhance IT project outcomes. Instead, we argue that the solution to the issue lies in IT providers working to engage user groups in actively participating in making the key choices - and that their success in achieving this is central to client satisfaction and firm benefits from IT investments in the application portfolio and the IT infrastructure - which from a retrospective viewpoint reflect alignment. To this end, we believe that the central role of the IT groups is to support and enable their clients to make appropriate choices by finding ways to convey the implications of different choice of features and requirements for the development and maintenance costs of applications. But how do IT groups get their clients involved in complex technology choices and in thinking about the implications of their requests for development and long term costs? We provide a an approach, based on the experience of a successful initiative by a large insurance company, in reaching out to their clients to help them become active participants in decisions related to application development and IT infrastructure investments.

Biography

Mani Subramani is currently an Associate Professor in the Information and Decision Sciences Department at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He graduated from Boston University prior to joining the faculty at the Carlson School in 1997. He has presented his research at many conferences and has published his work in several leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, the Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM and Sloan Management Review. He has also authored a teaching case published by the Harvard Business School and a report for IS practitioners published by the Gartner Group. He has served as a Guest Editor for the MISQ Special Issue on Knowledge Management and Information Technologies. His work on the market value implications of e-commerce announcements of firms (with Eric Walden) won the Best Paper Award at the 20th Annual International Conference on Information Systems in December 2000. He received the ‘Reviewer of the Year' award in 2002, an honor given annually to one reviewer making the most significant contribution through high quality, constructive peer reviews to the development of scholarly work at MIS Quarterly, a leading journal in the field.

Background: “Prior to returning to school for my doctoral studies I worked for seven years in the computer industry in India in positions in the software development and product management functions. This gave me a first-hand view of the investments and utilization of information technologies by firms in their quest for efficiency and competitive advantages. Understanding these issues and how companies can utilize IT to leverage the intangible assets such as expertise and interorganizational relationships in different industries are issues that I am interested in. As a professor investigating these dynamics, I draw from and apply principles from, organization theory, theories from social psychology and industrial organization.”

Research Interests: My research interests lie at the intersection of research in the Management of Information Systems and IT Strategy. I have been motivated by the intellectual challenge of combining the perspectives of organizational studies and the IS discipline. In particular, I have been influenced by the view of changes to the nature of work and organizing brought about by information systems as being techno-social phenomena. In my work, I have focused on the role of information technologies in creating the opportunity for firms to develop IT-enabled knowledge-based capabilities, which in turn can lead to performance outcomes. I believe that the deployment of information technologies to take advantage of intangible assets such as knowledge and intellectual capital represent the most significant routes to firm performance.

The questions motivating my research are centered around h ow firms achieve higher performance through information technologies . This is a critical issue that is motivated by problems firms currently face in benefiting from their IT investments.

Current Research Projects: My current projects fall into two major themes. The first theme focuses on the dominant contingencies influencing the exploitation of information technologies. The studies in this theme draw on the resource based view of the firm to examine factors enabling firms to exploit their IT investments and derive performance benefits. Studies pertaining to this theme focus on issues such as:

• the role of IT governance mechanisms, particularly those for infrastructure investments in enabling organizational responsiveness
• IT management mechanisms – IS-User partnerships, boundary spanning roles such as relationship manager
• The role of sourcing strategies such as offshoring and outsouring in enhancing the performance of information systems and in enhancing firm performance.
  The overall goal of this theme is to extend our understanding of the complex link between firms' IT initiatives and their performance.

  The second theme investigates the role of information technologies in creating and leveraging intangible assets . Studies pertaining to this theme examine issues such as:

• the role of IT Use in creating relationship-specific intangible assets in interorganizational relationships
• mechanisms underlying knowledge sharing and patterns of interpersonal influence in online networks
• factors used by individuals to infer the expertise of others and signal their own expertise to others in online networks
• factors influencing information sharing and knowledge sharing in online groups
• performance effects of the choice of control modes in knowledge intensive activities such as software development

  In this theme, I build on theories in social psychology on trust, pro-social behavior, cooperation and knowledge sharing to adapt and extend them to the context of social interactions in online networks. The overall goal in this theme is to extend our understanding of the complementary roles of IT assets and intangible assets in influencing firm performance and capitalizing on intangible assets. This work is particularly timely as we make the transition from the industrial age to an economy where the exploitation of intangible knowledge-based assets is an important basis of value creation. My research has been at the leading edge of developments in knowledge management using information technologies and in the role of IT in enabling firms to leverage intangible assets to create and claim value in asymmetric interorganizational relationships. My work has the potential to contribute significantly to the understanding of IT enabled knowledge-based capabilities in organizational and in interorganizational contexts. While the phenomena I examine are complex, I believe careful research using multiple theoretical perspectives and methodologies can contribute significantly to the development of insights and ultimately, have the potential to influence managerial practice.

  General Impressions: I am excited to be a part of the tradition of excellence in research and outreach to the community at the University of Minnesota. It is a privilege to be part of an environment that recognizes the contributions made through research, through working with practitioners in the field and through innovations in teaching. The Carlson School has a bright future and I believe the IDSc department will continue to be a dominant player in our discipline.

  For contact information, please visit the IDSc Faculty Information Page .