executives (Henderson & Venkatraman 1989, Earl 1989, Broadbent & Weill 1991). An outline of factors that influence organisation's strategic goals is summarised in Exhibit 6. Exhibit 6: Scott Morton's Five Forces Influencing the Organisation's Objectives(Scott Morton 1991) Organisations are facing the reconceptualisation of the role of information technology in business. Scott Morton proposes five levels of complexity at which reconfiguration can be applied. Exhibit 7 reproduces his schematic: evolutionary levels: olocalised exploitation within individual business functions. The primary objectives addressed are local efficiency and effectiveness; ointernal integration between different systems and applications, generally involving not just automation, but also rationalisation, and using a common IT platform. Efficiency and effectiveness are enhanced by coordination and cooperation within the enterprise; revolutionary levels: obusiness process redesign, involving more thorough re-evaluation of the enterprise value-chain and the production process, and more far-reaching change; obusiness network redesign, the reconfiguration of the scope and tasks of the business network involved in the creation and delivery of products and services. Coordination and cooperation extend, selectively, beyond the enterprise's boundaries; and obusiness scope redefinition, involving migration of functions across the enterprise's boundaries, to the extent of changing the organisation's conception of the business it is in. Exhibit 7: Scott Morton's Five Levels of IT-Induced Reconfiguration(Scott Morton 1991) The nature of business governance is conceptualised along a continuum from loosely-coupled (arm's-length, standard relationships like the classic open-market transactions, with relatively low cost to switch from one participant to another) through to tightly-coupled (unique, specialised relationships with high switching costs). The specific mode of function...
