| This is a longitudinal case study of information resource management in two large and technologically advanced companies in the U.S. transportation industry, during a period where both organizations undertook large projects that together amounted to a transition from a centralized to a distributed IT architecture. The resulting IT architectures were centered around three components: A centrally managed, standardized set of intelligent workstations, a core of mainframe-oriented operational software, and decision support oriented data repositories on parallel processing servers. The study identifies, describes and analyzes the reasons for, experiences through, and outcomes of these transitions.; Management of distributed information technology can be seen as the management of infrastructure evolution, where the challenge to IS management is to maintain a technologically up-to-date, standardized, widely available information processing platform, where the use of the platform is determined by the individual user or small organization unit. Managing the delivery, diffusion and maintenance process of the technology is as important as picking the right technology in itself. A model of this process is developed, seeing management of distributed information technology as a process of repeated decisions, where the strategy implementor must balance five influencing factors (prior technology experience, corporate strategic direction, technology evolution, organizational context and industrial context) in the choice of technology, organizational structures, and specific applications of the technology.; Several important issues in managing distributed technology. The first is that technology commonality and coverage seems to be more important than the features of the technology per se--in other words, better a mediocre technology which everyone has, rather than a superb technology in the hands of a smaller portion on the company. Second, key to success is the management of perceptions, achieved through careful creation and selection of successful examples of technology use, explained and made available for independent replication and implementation by the organization. Third, a key problem in managing the evolution and distribution of distributed (as opposed to centralized) information technology is the inability to dynamically allocate computing capability and functionality in a distributed architecture. |
