Exploring the Role of Academia in Nurturing IT-Enabled Business Change

Abstract

Throughout much of the last five decades the process of introducing, integrating, and exploiting information technology in work organizations has posed formidable cha llenges regularly resulting in reports of significant underperformance and failure. On closer inquiry it emerges that such underperformance and failure are firmly rooted in an inability to foster a highly integrated approach to the management of IT-enabled business change. This paper critiques in detail both the enduring and deep-rooted nature of this dilemma paying particular attention to the role of diverse occupational communities in its perpetuation through time. Furthermore, it explicates the polarized patterns of cognition and action embedded in these communities paying particular attention to the executive, information technology, and organization development communities. Finally, it presents a robust critique of the manner in which academic formation within these occupational communities firmly reinforces such polarized patterns of behaviour thereby sustaining the enduring dilemma with IT-enabled bus iness change.