Chapter 5: Organizational Structures that Support strategic Initiatives

Organizational Structures 

• Organizational employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiatives that create competitive advantages.

• Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses upon.

IT Roles and Responsibilities 

• Information technology is a relatively new functional area, having only been around formally for around 40 years.

• Recent IT-related strategic positions:

1. Chief Information Officer (CIO) 
2. Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
3. Chief Security Officer (CSO)
4. Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)
5. Chief Knowledge Office (CKO)

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

• Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT business goals and objectives.
• The CIO typically reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). CIO's must possess a solid and detailed understanding of every aspect of an organization coupled with tremendous insight into the capability of IT and have strong business ad IT skills. 
• Broad CIO functions include:

1. Manager – ensuring the delivery of all IT projects, on time and within budget.
2. Leader – ensuring the strategic vision of IT is in line with the strategic vision of the organization.
3. Communicator – building and maintaining strong executive relationships. 

• Average CIO compensation by industry 

• What concerns CIO's the most

 

 

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

• Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of IT.

Chief Security Officer (CSO)

• Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems.

Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) 

• Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information.

Chief Knowledge Office (CKO) 

• Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization’s knowledge.

• Skills pivotal for success in executive IT roles

The Gap between Business Personnel and IT Personnel

• IT Personnel have their own vocabularies consisting of acronyms and technical terms. It possess expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting and sales.
• Business Personnel have their own vocabularies based on their experience and expertise.
• This typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel and IT personnel.

Improving Communication

• Business personnel must seek to increase their understanding of IT.
• IT personnel must seek to increase their understanding of the business.
• It is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure effective communication between business personnel and IT personnel. 

Organizational Fundamental - Ethics and Security

• Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base their businesses on to be successful.
• In recent years, such events as the Enron and Martha Stewart, along with 9/11 have shed new light on the meaning of ethics and security.

Ethics 

• The principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people.
• Privacy is a major ethical issue.
• Privacy is the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your own personal possessions, and not to be observed without your consent.
• Issues affected by technology advances:

1. Intellectual property - Intangible creative work that is embodied in physical form.
2. Copyright - The legal protection afforded an expression of an idea, such as a song, video game, and some types of proprietary documents.
3. Fair use doctrine - In certain situations, it is legal to use copyrighted material.
4. Pirated software - The unauthorized use, duplication, distribution, or sale of copyrighted software.
5. Counterfeit software - Software that is manufactured to look like the real thing and sold as such.

• One of the main ingredients in trust is privacy. Privacy during Web interactions is a major concern for many individuals.
• Primary reasons privacy issues lost trust for e-business and ruin a relationship. E-business is built on the practice of exchanging large amounts of information between many parties. Without privacy, there will not be any trust. 

 

Security

• Organizational information is intellectual capital and it must be protected.
• Information security is a protection of information from accidental or intentional misuse by persons inside or outside an organization.
• E-business automatically creates tremendous information security risks for organizations.