GJSG Vol.2

From the Editor's Desk

Article One [Case Research]
Strategy-enabled Governance Control Systems Transformations: the case of SaveCom
Georges Mills, Harvard University, USA

Information technology (IT)-enabled organizational transformations are emphasized in a great deal of research. However, IT-enabled management control systems (MCS) transformations to facility management for steering an organization toward its strategic objectives have become relevant and important, yet underexplored. To address this gap, the present study illustrates how a business intelligence (BI) system enables the transformations of organizational MCS. Through an in-depth case study of a Taiwanese telecommunications company, the IT features, and their direct effects and induced effects to MCS are analyzed in terms of an organization’s belief systems, boundary systems, diagnostic control systems, and interactive control systems. The implications for the organizational MCS design of these effects are discussed.

Article Two [Case Research]
Mobilizing for tactical governance
Elsa Cumpell, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Green Poalis, University of Oxford, UK

According to Krishnamurthy et al (2007) the building of competitive advantage from alliances via innovation with technical partners is the most challenging of the objectives sought in partnerships. Academic research in the last decade has examined the prerequisites and success factors and general agreement has been reached on the critical issues. They include, for example, the concept of relationship capital - mutual trust, mutual commitment and information exchange (Sarkar et al, 2001). However, it is not clear that this knowledge has led to improvements in the historically poor success ratio. This case explores the successful implementation of an innovation partnership, endorsing the recent work by Sturgess & Cumming (2011) on the importance of a focus on implementation.
Previous academic research on such partnerships has tended to focus on manufacturing; in particular the automotive engineering and pharmaceutical sectors. Relationships were typically asymmetric with the supplier being much smaller in size and power relative to the manufacturer. The authors wanted to explore a different power and size relationship emerging from the growing needs of a number of service industries, where technology is becoming a strategic imperative for gaining competitive advantage. Organisations in the aviation, retail banking and retail communications sectors are seeking IT and telecommunication skills that will help them build competitive advantage from better services, systems and products. The most knowledgeable organisations with this technical knowledge tend to be large ones. Our case examines how Westpac, a large retail bank in Australia, went about the task of reviewing their existing commercial relationships and selected the most promising one for the objective of building a trusted value adding partnership. In the process, they identified the critical pre-requisites and developed a five-stage key success model for implementation. It is hoped that the study will encourage other researchers to look more closely at the implementation challenge.

Article Three [Case Research]
Recovering from Trust Breakdowns in Large organization control
Robert Smalius, Texas University, USA

On the basis of experiences from the Faroese large-scale implementation of integrated healthcare information systems and insights into dynamic aspects of trust, we offer the following lessons for the successful management and recovery of trust (breakdowns) in large system implementations: restore relations by turning towards face-to-face events and procedures, assure a well-functioning and available support organization, demonstrate trust in actors to enhance their own self-confidence, and celebrate successes, even the smallest ones or those injected by yourself. The propositions are based on a six-year longitudinal qualitative case study and analyzed using critical incidents and content analysis by means of a framework based on Giddens Theories on Modernity and Abstract Systems. The propositions were discussed in a seminar with the project participants. Finally the findings are challenged and sharpened and suggestions for further research are given.

Book Review
The Outsourcing organization: From Cost Governance to Strategy Innovation
By Walter James