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how process activities focus on building interorganization alliances at the local,
state, and federal levels to steer large-scale ICT-enabled change.
It is the responsibility of executives to “recognize that the value of ICTs is not only
about efficiency and economy but also about engaging citizens in policy discourse,
managing knowledge in public organizations, and integrating organizational cul-
tures” (Bryson et al., 2010, p. 511). Now that public organizations are becoming more
interconnected and a reliance on interdependency is essential for many, managing
knowledge in and between networks of organizations is crucial. Fostering a shared
cultural philosophy among networks rather than individual organizations about the
strategic agenda to instill belief and gather support for mission-critical advances is a
key feature of strategy-led transformational initiatives. However, as it relates to set-
ting the strategic ICT agenda, how are public executives working together to visual-
ize a future of highly interconnected systems? What form of management routines
are embedded into the process of acting strategically and how do public executives
respond to and overcome major constraining factors such as politics, power, and tim-
ing when planning multiyear ICT initiatives that extend far beyond any single gov-
ernment's remit? More research around such themes could be rewarding.
7.8.3 Toward an Interdisciplinary Perspective
on Strategic Alignment
Much of the scholarly literature as it relates to aligning strategy and ICT can be
described as overly mechanistic and lacks a strong process orientation (Chan &
Reich, 2007b). The argument for an interdisciplinary multimethod approach to
inquiry into major ICT-enabled transformation whereby public executives hold
within themselves the necessary knowledge to cocreate the strategic ICT agenda
with management peers and executive leaders has been well articulated (McDonagh,
in press). The approach calls for studying ICT-enabled change by investigating the
process directly. Such an approach looks beyond traditional ICT management views
and instead recognizes that strategy is a multifaceted domain with roots embedded
in the fields of strategic management, organization and change management, and
program and project management. Such an approach could be based on multiple
fields of scholarly interest tied to fostering organizational change and development
as it relates to ICT-enabled initiatives. Tracing the sequence of events over time,
first-hand, offers the potential to glean new insight into the complexities attached
to strategic alignment in public organizations and thus critically illuminate the
embedded nature of interdisciplinary components.
7.8.4 Toward an Ambidextrous Capability
Perspective on Strategic Alignment
Little is known in terms of how public organizations explore knowledge to identify
new opportunities to leverage ICT to drive efficiency, effectiveness, and interactivity
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