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Managing the Strategic Alignment of Organizations 71 it ‘ought’ to do and more on what is actually working in the aggressive e-commercedriven environment. Managers of tomorrow must therefore understand what ecommerce is; how the approach to this concept will be; and how it will affect the economic and social aspects of the organization. This chapter will therefore address the importance of economics on the strategic alignment of organizations. The chapter will firstly look at the strategic dimension of e-commerce in the organization. Next, the article will address the issue of e-commerce forecasting, IT alignment and e-commerce, the economic effect and the measurement of alignment while keeping the effect of e-commerce in mind. The summary of the chapter will be last. APPROACH TO THIS CHAPTER This chapter will use the interpretive approach to research as an alternative to the more traditional positivist approach. By using the interpretive approach, this chapter refers to such procedures as those associated with inferential statistics, hermeneutics and phenomenology. The framework proposed is to formulate a specific goal (economics, e-commerce and social aspects), subject to certain constraints. This approach will call for the active role of people in strengthening a truly collaborative research effort to maintain a peaceful co-existence between all the boundaries. Behaviours such as pointlessness, absurdness or confusion can play a role during the alignment of the strategies in the organization. The phenomenological approach will therefore help with the validity of the interpretation that this article will conduct. THE STRATEGIC DIMENSION OF THE ORGANIZATION Being competitive in the next couple of years will depend on the effective application of e-commerce. Organizations need to take a strategic perspective to ensure that investment in e-commerce is contributing to the organization’s business strategy. Increasingly, e-commerce is therefore being used by innovative organizations to facilitate the economic force of technology strategies now that reengineering has lost some of its lustre. Strategic alignment could also be defined as the extent to which the e-commerce strategy supports, and is supported by the business strategy. Economic advantage should be based on the capabilities of the organization. Organizational learning processes produce economic advantages (Sohn, 1999). The organizational 1earning processes obtain knowledge from e-commerce, Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.
72 Lubbe interpret, distribute to the organization and memorize the knowledge. In order to have economic advantage, most organizations should have unique resources and capabilities. These resources and capabilities could help with the alignment of the strategies of the organization. Organizational learning, therefore, provides the opportunities to improve the existing e-commerce and eventually help with better alignment of the strategies. Whenever a positive social culture exists, employees are encouraged to learn and be ready to accept new information or strategies and this could eventually also help with better alignment of strategies. Ulrich and Lake (1990) as cited by Sohn noted that organizational capabilities have four components, that is shared mindset, management and human social resources practices, capacity for change and leadership. These capabilities have all the ability to affect alignment; they should be kept in mind when alignment is discussed. Sohn argues that e-commerce influences organizational learning and that each process of organizational learning is affected and adjusted by e-commerce. These adjustments would affect the alignment of all strategies; the executives should keep them in mind. Organizations should also use a set of measurements that could be used for measuring key business goals like economic impact; the results should be used to quantify its performance and emphasize its role in orchestrating alignment with all the strategies. In an age when economics, cost-cutting, social responsibly and adding competitive value lie more squarely on the shoulders of the organization it is no longer enough to successfully deploy systems - they should also be part of the alignment of all the strategies. Using metrics enables e-commerce to spotlight its value to get additional funding for future technology projects and ensure that everything aligns. There had been many questions on whether e-commerce contributes economically to the business and how efficient the organization is in aligning all strategies. No one had been able to effectively answer these questions. The tricky part of this question is how to align all strategies or measuring the contribution e-commerce makes to the organization. The use of e-commerce in organizations is subject to various kinds of risk and this is part of the alignment of the strategies (Bandyopadhyay et al., 1999). As spending on e-commerce rises steeply, organizations become increasingly technology-dependent and consequently become economically highly vulnerable to the risks of e-commerce failure and eventual failure of the organization because there would be no alignment of strategies. Risk management of e-commerce is therefore one of the important issues facing executives today. There is a framework, as discussed by Bandyopadhyay, et al. that concentrates on the sequential linkage of the four components of risk management which composes its entire. Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.
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Acquisition Editor: Mehdi Khosrow-P
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The Economic and Social Impacts of
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vi Preface E-commerce is not new, t
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viii the e-commerce’s experience
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Electronic Commerce and Data Privac
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About the Authors 259 Eric Cloete B
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About the Authors 261 Technikon. He
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A absenteeism 191 accreditation 247
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low mean values 171 M management 14
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