Managing and Using Information System

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THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS STRATEGY TRIANGLE

The information systems strategy triangle highlights the alignment necessary between decisions of business strategy, information systems, and organizational design. This chapter reviews models of business strategy including Porter's generic strategies, and dynamic models such as hypercompetition. It suggests a model for creating a social business strategy and briefly discusses frameworks for designing organizational strategies including the Leavitt Business Diamond and the Managerial Levers model. It concludes with a simple framework for decoding information systems strategy.

Over the course of 87 news-filled days, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill became the largest marine oil spill in human history. The spill quickly became a public relations nightmare for BP, which quickly focused its efforts toward remedying its image by spearheading the cleanup. At one point, and estimated four million barrels per day flowed freely into the gulf waters, straining the marine ecosystem and threatening the shoreline from Texas to Florida.

After a lengthy investigation, BP concluded in its internal report that “a sequence of failures involving multiple companies and work teams” caused the explosion that subsequently allowed oil to spill freely into the gulf. While repeated failures to follow safety procedures were at the heart of the catastrophe, ...