Sujet: Diffusion/Adoption
Ce papier analyse 57 projets d’investissement de solutions TI dans 6 hopitaux. L’analyse révèle 7 archétypes de gourvernance des TI. Il s’agit de 7 façons ou chemins différents afin d’en arriver à une décision d’adoption. Pour le CDG, ceci donne des exemples réels de différents chemins qui mène à une décision d’adoption d’une innovation dans le secteur publique.
Définitions
it investment: “In this study, an IT investment is defined as a hospital’s allocation of financial and/or human capital on a specific informa-tion system.”
it function power: “The extent to which the IT department can influence other organizational units. IT function power was measured by (1) the IT manager’s hierarchical distance from top management; (2) the IT manager’s and staff’s self-perception of power; (3) the role of IT in the hospital strategy; and (4) the administrative personnel’s and medical professionals’ perceptions of the IT department’s influence (Appendix C).”
it governance: “A path consisting of three organizational actors who played the leading role in the three stages of an IT investment decision. The lead actors can be of four types: top management (TM), IT professionals (ITP),
administrative group (AG), and healthcare professionals (HCP).”
it investment characteristics: “An investment’s organizational level (departmental, interdepartmental, enterprise, or interorganizational), functional scope, and business
impact.”
external influence: The overall influence imposed by the external environment on the firm. An aggregate measure is used to capture the influence of competitive pressures, institutional pressures, or available resources.
centralization: The extent to which decision rights are concentrated at the top. Based on interviews and hospital organizational charts, the degree of centrali- zation of each hospital was determined (Appendix B).
Normes
“The resultant IT governance archetypes
identified in this study were emergent in the hospitals, rather
than predefined. The hospitals were unaware of the variety of
IT governance archetypes being used. If an a priori under-
standing of the IT governance archetypes is achieved,
appropriate measures can be taken to assess the variety of
decision processes used for IT investments, to adjust IT
governance patterns to prevent ill-advised IT investments, and
to design effective IT governance for future decision pro-
cesses. As Weill and Ross (2005) suggest, effective IT
governance can limit the negative impact of organizational
politics in IT-related decisions and improve organizational
performance.”
“First, when there are strong external influences, top management
monarchy seems to be appropriate for high level IT invest-
ments and administration/professional monarchy appropriate
for low level IT investments.”
“The advantage of using monarchies is that the organization can
quickly catch opportunities or fix problems, leading to short-
term success. The disadvantage is that without inputs from
the IT department, the information systems resulting from the
quick decisions may cause long-term problems such as the
lack of system integration.”
“Second, given that IT professionals seek to share or reuse
existing IT resources among business units and to standardize
the organizational IT architecture (Weill 2004), their involve-
ment in IT governance usually incorporates IT-related
information and analysis into the decision process, thus
enhancing procedural rationality of decision making (Dean
and Sharfman 1996). Hence, for business-oriented IT
investments, top management–IT duopoly, administration–IT
duopoly, and professional–IT duopoly should be practiced.”
“Business managers, therefore, should
initiate the proposal to specify their business needs and IT
professionals should develop the best IT solutions to fulfill
those needs. The disadvantage of these duopolies is that
conflicts are likely to occur and conflict resolution may slow
down the decision process.”
“Finally, IT monarchy is appropriate for decisions on IT
infrastructure that is not highly related with specific business
needs. This archetype may not be appropriate for business-
oriented IT investments because excessive governance by IT
professionals may lead to biased decisions. For example, it is
possible that an IT investment governed by IT monarchy is
not well aligned with the business needs due to the lack of
business-oriented inputs.”
Factoids
“Voici les 7 chemins pré-adoption et leurs descriptions:
Les états analysés sont: initation – developpement – proposition
Actors can be of four types: top management (TM), IT professionals (ITP), the administrative
group (AG), and healthcare professionals (HCP). To identify
1 – Top Management Monarchy: The TM–TM–TM path is named as top management monarchy because top management controls every stage of the decision-making process.
2 – Top Management–IT Duopoly: The top management–IT duopoly archetype represents the TM–ITP–TM decision path, in which top management initiates the investment project and IT professionals develop the proposal.
3 – IT Monarchy: The ITP–ITP–TM decision path is called IT monarchy, suggesting that IT professionals initiate and develop proposals with top management making the final decision.
4 – Administration Monarchy: The administration monarchy archetype represents an AG–AG–TM decision path.
5 – Administration–IT Duopoly: The administration–IT duopoly governance archetype denotes an AG–ITP–TM decision path, indicating that the investment proposal is initiated by administrative department managers, developed by IT professionals, and approved by top management.
6 – Professional Monarchy: The professional monarchy archetype depicts the HCP–HCP–TM decision path, where healthcare professionals initiate and develop IT investment proposals.
7 – Professional–IT Duopoly: We use professional–IT duopoly to describe the HCP–ITP–TM decision path.”
As the five propositions demonstrate, no IT governance archetype can be sufficiently predicted by a single factor.
