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This paper connects research from business model innovation and information systems by exploring critical IT capabilities for servitized business models. The adoption of servitized business models is a major business model innovation strategy. At the same time, digitalization drives the evolution of IT capabilities at these business models. Scholars argue that it remains unclear how IT capabilities enable servitized business models to build a competitive advantage by achieving cost advantages or differentiation. This paper explores IT capabilities that enable building a competitive advantage for servitized business models based on a qualitative analysis of multiple published case studies. The authors identify configurations of IT capabilities among servitized business models. The findings contribute to servitization research by exploring IT capabilities
and how they are combined among servitized business models.
The insights help practitioners deploy digital technologies and IT
assets effectively as building blocks of IT capabilities to advance
their servitized business model.
In the era of digitalization, companies review how to build competitive advantage drawing on their capabilities. In this context, the paper revisits the concept of IT capabilities. We summarize the “canonical” body of literature to characterize how leading scholars conceptualized and differentiated IT capabilities and then we show how new types of IT capabilities (for example, rising from SMACIT technologies) relate to this. We find that the resource-based view is still leading in how to conceptualize IT capabilities. However, an alternative perspective on IT assets is emerging, looking at it from the angle of digital technologies as stacks. Digital technologies form the foundation for a new technology-driven perspective on IT capabilities. This new view complements the established differentiation of IT capabilities considering IT infrastructure flexibility, IT management, and IT personnel capability. Both perspectives describe the explorative and exploitative nature of IT capabilities. This paper helps scholars and practitioners to clearly distinguish different perspectives of IT capabilities on how to build a competitive advantage from IT today.
Lean management (LM) is well established in manufacturing organizations, and LM adoption in service organizations has recently increased. However, we lack research that focuses on the success of lean management implementations in IT organizations (lean IT). This paper contributes to knowledge of the success factors of lean IT implementation and the relative importance of each factor based on the insights of field experts. The experts identified, agreed on, and ranked 12 implementation success factors for lean IT in a Delphi study using the best/worst scaling technique. The most important factors were leadership involvement, change culture and work ethic, employee involvement, and performance management. Factors of intermediate importance were implementation facilitation, training and education, clear vision and direction, long-term focus, communication, and a holistic approach. Least important factors were existing skills, organizational changes/standardization, and financial resources. This paper contributes a more nuanced understanding of the relative importance of lean IT success factors, proposes relationships between them, and comprehensively explains how to use the rigorous best/worst scaling method in a traditional ranking-type Delphi study.
Research on Shadow IT is facing a conceptual dilemma in cases where previously “covert” systems developed by business entities are integrated in the organizational IT management. These systems become visible, are thus not “in the shadows” anymore, and subsequently do not fit to existing definitions of Shadow IT. Practice shows that some information systems share characteristics of Shadow IT but are created openly in alignment with the IT organization. This paper proposes the term “Business-managed IT” to describe “overt” information systems developed or managed by business entities and distinguishes it from Shadow IT by illustrating case vignettes. Accordingly,our contribution is to suggest a concept and its delineation against other concepts. In this way, IS researchers interested in IT originated from or maintained by business entities can construct theories with a wider scope of application that are at the same time more specific to practical problems. In addition, the terminology allows to value potentially innovative developments by business entities more adequately.
Purpose
With the rise of digitization, IT organizations are challenged to provide efficient service delivery and offer innovative digital solutions while maintaining a constant resource capacity. To address this challenge, some IT organizations have adopted Lean Management (LM). Although LM is a standard production mode in manufacturing, it is less familiar to IT organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify 12 lessons learned from companies who implemented LM in their IT organization (Lean IT) to free up their IT resource capacity from existing day-to-day operations so they could use it to enable their digitization strategy.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study of two major international companies from different industries. Data were collected from 25 structured interviews.
Findings
The lessons learned provide insights into how these companies implemented Lean IT, the potential outcomes they aimed for, what they did to achieve those outcomes, how they facilitated the implementation of Lean IT, and restrictions they encountered during the implementation.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are based on a limited range of IT organizations.
Practical implications
The lessons learned inform those implementing Lean IT because they explain how companies have implemented Lean IT to facilitate digitization and the benefits and pitfalls they encountered. A comparison of Lean IT and Lean Production shows that LM is transferable to IT organizations if domain specific requirements are respected.
Originality/value
This paper reports the unique experience of companies implementing Lean IT, which can inform other companies in a similar situation.
Incomplete conceptualization of the information technology outsourcing (ITO) literature represents a challenge for navigating extant research and engaging into purposeful academic discourse. We extend the analysis of empirical findings on determinants of ITO decisions, outcomes, and governance. We identify increasing levels of research maturity, analyze effects of 38 new independent variables, highlight contradictory findings, and observe increasing interest in emerging topics such as innovation through ITO and multisourcing.