Digital Capability for Practice : Implications of Appreciative Systems Model on Analysing Organisational Strategies

IT-enabled innovations continually disrupt logics of value, competition and organisation in a growing number of industries. Increasingly, value is created, delivered and captured in complex cross-industry value networks through which external resources and capabilities are accessed. Accordingly, strategic intentions for interorganisational collaborations have become an integral part of the overall strategic framework for firms operating in such environments. Driving from the Appreciative Systems Model, Digital capability and Strategy as Practice perspectives, the proposed model illustrates how and why strategic decisions are made and sustained in complex digitalised environments. That is, events and ideas such as technological change, competition, business trends or internal shortcomings leads to formulation of strategic intentions that are validated by the organisational digital capability. The action phase that follows might involve business model reconfiguration and investments in new IS competencies. Lessons learnt during such cycle adding to the newly acquired IS competencies reinforces the organisational digital capability, which elevates the standards used for formulating future appreciations. In line with the emerging literature on the concept of digital capability, the proposed framework accounts for the two-way relationship between IS/IT and organisational strategies. That is, previous investments in IS/IT functions affect standards and perceptions of events and ideas, which lead to changed appreciations. The action phase that follows might include investments in new IS/IT functions which in turn affect the future cycles. The concepts of appreciation and action also comply with the notions of strategy as intended (appreciation) verses strategy as executed (action), and how both of them affect future cycles