Information Technology Reference
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The problems these theories encountered are, however, useful to indicate in which dir-
ections the development of a general IS theory might go.
In broad terms, competitive advantage theory appears to have foundered on at least two
related problems. These are the issues of imitation and structural change, which together
refute the idea that IT applications can generally be considered to be reliable competitive
instruments. What the available evidence shows is first that it is in most cases at least
as good to be a fast IT imitator (i.e. to wait and copy a promising innovation, usually at
a lower cost) than it is to be a first mover (Vitale, 1986; Clemons and Row, 1988), and
second that IT innovations usually operate to effect structural industry change rather
than entrench specific competitive edges (Copeland and McKenney, 1988; Kettinger et
al., 1995; Clemons and Row, 1988). Both these findings have been available for some
time, and have not been refuted.
The weaknesses of theories dealing with systems integration are less obvious in that
they deal with ideal structures (Martin, 1990; Wyzalek, 2000), theorists have acknow-
ledged the practical difficulties of achieving integration goals (Segars and Grover, 1996;
Hamilton, 1999), and the integration of processing platforms is not only possible, but
frequently very effective (Weill and Broadbent, 1998). The problem is not just that there
is virtually no empirical support for the view that comprehensive IS integration is
achievable (Segars and Grover, 1996; Goodhue et al., 1992; Allen and Boynton, 1991),
but that consideration of the negative possibilities inherent in integration is not part of
the theory. Yet evidence is available that integrated systems structures are relatively
rigid and difficult to change in practice (Allen and Boynton, 1991) and that an organisa-
tion implementing such structures must lose some capacity for flexible response to
change as a result. The issue of how to balance efficiency gains against losses of this
type has been neither conceptualised nor researched.
Toward a structural theory of information systems
The problems with extant theory suggest some directions for the development of a robust
portfolio-level theory of IS as it relates to organisational and societal structures. The
finding that IS innovations change industry structures rather than entrench competitive
advantages (Clemons and Row, 1988; Kettinger et al., 1995) is one possible starting point.
A good IS theory (in contradistinction to competitive advantage theory, which was
predominantly business-oriented) would deal with a range of social phenomena that so
far lack a broad analytical explanation. Those phenomena include the increasing en-
croachment of standardised IS structures on social behaviour through the implementation
of standardised data and process definitions in a range of systems. As standard IS
structures become more widespread, so commercial and government organisations come
to look more and more alike, at least in behavioural terms.
The agency-structure relationship has been a central concern in sociological theory for
a long time. Are social structures 'real' when it is clear that they are constructions that
must be affirmed by human agents acting with some degree of individual autonomy?
Putative answers, all of interest, and all shedding light on complex social issues have
come from theorists as diverse as Marx (1981), Giddens (1984), and Bourdieu (1980)
among many others. But the point at issue here is that these theories do not deal with
the impacts of structures reified in formal information systems. Such structures clearly
allow for voluntarism in principle, as people may choose to ignore IS constraints, but
they cannot then achieve their transactional goals. Yet active resistance to the influence
of standardised structures clearly becomes more difficult the more widely adopted they
are. IS structures are in this perspective more rigidly defined, and more formally con-
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