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 business upon.

IT Roles and Responsibilities

• IT is a relatively new functional area.
• Recent IT-related strategic positions:
• Chief Information Officer (CIO)
• oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives.
• Broad CIO functions include:
1. Manager
2. Leader
3. Communicator

• 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 info.

• Chief Knowledge Office (CKO)
• responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization's knowledge.

GRAPH 1: Skills pivotal for success in executive IT roles

The Gap Between Business Personnel and IT Personnel

• Business personnel possess expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting, and sales.
• IT personnel have the technological expertise.
• The typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel and IT personnel.

Improving Communications

• 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 Fundamentals - Ethics and Security

• Ethics - the principles and standards that guide our behaviour toward other people.

• Privacy is a major ethical issue. Privacy means 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:
• Intellectual property
• Copyright
• Fair use doctrine
• Pirated software
• Counterfeit software

• Primary reasons privacy issues lost trust for e-business.
• Loss of personal privacy is a top concern for Americans in the 21st century.
• Among Internet users, 37% would be "a lot" more inclined to purchase a product on a Web site that had a privacy policy.
• Privacy/security is the number one factor that would convert Internet researchers into Internet buyers.

• Security 

• Organizational information is intellectual capital - it must be protected.

• Information security is the 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.

-END OF CHAPTER 5-