Adapting information technology management for effective information technology strategy leadership

M.Com.Abstract: In this dissertation, it is argued that the lack of consistent information technology (IT) and organisational strategies heightens the proclivity to cancel IT initiatives in a given industry sector. Organisational strategy loosely conveys a compounded perspective pertaining to business and organisational strategies. In theory business, IT and organisational strategies are reasoned to hinge on efficient enterprise IT integration concepts that contextualise conceptual links between business, IT and organisational architectures to best address contextual business and socioeconomic needs. However, an effective socioeconomy demands contextual awareness of strategic management of IT, leadership and management, geopolitical and other factors affecting the evolutionary nature of the IT industry, enterprise architecture, enterprise risk optimisation and principles of governance and management. Business and IT leadership’s contextual awareness is necessitated by the concept of levels of abstraction inherent in the principles of separation of concerns. Hence the strategic use of the concept in ‘opinion’ formulation within the paradigm of a sociotechnical system design, development and management. Thus, optimal business performance demands that business and IT leadership and management develop mechanisms to establish symbiosis between governance and management principles, glued together by an adaptive enterprise-wide standard architecture. There is therefore a contended need to integrate IT, processes and strategies. This demands that business and IT professionals possess an interdisciplinary and a multidisciplinary set of competencies. The perceived set of competencies supposedly help professionals to effectively navigate the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of the concept of information technology management (ITM). Thus the resulting entangled sociotechnical system constituents, responsible for the overall perspective of the ITM concept, are constructs representing the challenge imposed by the journey to purposefully adapt ITM for effective IT strategy leadership for a globally competitive economic system. The research balances deontological and teleological philosophical theories, embracing an advanced mixed research methodology and embedding limited quantitative methods in a predominantly qualitative study. These theories underline systemic and deliberate practice aimed at optimising similarly credible research findings as well as provide a realistic perspective. Consequently, analysis employs a systematic approach based on four contextual themes, viz. administrative, investment management, management and technology practices and a closing perspective, in deliberate efforts to optimise triangulation. The outcome is an adaptive ITM process model facilitating discovery, construction, governance and management of a purposeful sociotechnical system in any given geopolitical context. Thus the adaptive ITM process model can benefit both academics and practitioners in their respective quests to contextualise philosophies and concretise processes sustaining purposeful sociotechnical system design, development and management. In principle, the research introduces a general theory of collaboration theoretically thriving on ITM as the art, philosophy and science of orchestrating strategic management principles to enliven the value of IT in pursuit of an optimum strategic intent in a continuum