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shown that “senior managers take a leadership role in a handful of key IT decisions”
(Ross & Weill, 2002, p. 85). In contrast, senior management abdication of execu-
tive responsibility for ICT investment decisions usually results in wasted investment
and missed opportunities. Some examples of this would include the following: Senior
managers fail to fully interpret the transformational significance and inadequately
prepare an organization accordingly; conservatism is present among senior managers,
whereby there is limited appreciation for the potential of ICT enablement; and deci-
sion making is confined to the senior management level, thereby failing to capture the
innovative potential located in other areas such as the middle management level.
7.6.3 Organization Structure
Organization structures are usually more rigid in comparison with the private sec-
tor, that is, red tape (public) versus flexibility (private) (Silva & Hirschheim, 2007).
Public organizations tend toward higher internal complexity, supported by stable
hierarchies with centralized and formalized rules (Rainey, 2009). The role of ICT
aims to support the attainment of political and public service goals, with deploy-
ment undertaken in relatively rigid organizational structures (Dufner, Holley, &
Reed, 2003). The bureaucratic attributes and political contexts of public adminis-
tration impede and reduce the pace of ICT development. Strategy is treated from
a command perspective led from the top down and reduces the opportunity to
leverage ICT by way of fermenting a strategic approach that cultivates development
through social learning.
7.6.4 Stakeholder Engagement and Management
The ICT structure cannot, in isolation, articulate a vision for ICT and selectively
set out the major priorities to tackle. “Championing technology is as much about
collaboration and persuasion as it is about setting strategy” (Harvey Nash, 2013,
p. 6). Arguably, collaboration and persuasion are key components of strategy. The
process of stakeholder engagement is a critical impediment for many public orga-
nizations to overcome and features strongly in determining whether organizations
find themselves lowly or highly aligned. Stakeholder engagement involves building
support with public executives for crafting the ICT vision. This form of stakeholder
management is necessary at multiple levels, such as between the CIO and senior
management team, IT executives, and functional leaders, and is particularly rel-
evant to the public context in terms of gaining support for critical initiatives from
government leaders, policy decision makers, and high-level institutional executives.
Stakeholder engagement can be classified in terms of its strategic significance via
the impact at functional, business, strategic, or network level (De Wit & Meyer,
2002). Technological success is underpinned by collaborative working among ICT
and public executives and should be recognized as the necessary need to partner in
forming and executing strategic ICT ambitions.
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