The End of the IT Department: IT Experts Become Part of the Business Departments and Are Coordinated by a Dedicated Executive Responsibility

Nils Urbach and Frederik Ahlemann
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Nils Urbach: University of Bayreuth
Frederik Ahlemann: University of Duisburg-Essen

A chapter in IT Management in the Digital Age, 2019, pp 101-107 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In view of the developments described in the preceding chapters, it is obvious that the question of how IT departments will be structured in future and where they will be organizationally anchored, is already asked today. There are a number of indications that IT departments, as we currently know them today, will not survive. If more and more tasks are carried out in the immediate vicinity of the business units or directly in the business units (see chapters “Development and operation are not decisive: IT management follows the “innovate-design-transform” paradigm” and “Focusing on the user: development processes are agile, end-user-centered, and merged with the operation”), if large parts of the IT value chain are carried out externally (see chapters “Infrastructure as commodity: IT infrastructure services are traded on free markets and purchased as required” and “Transformable IT landscapes: IT architectures are standardized, modular, flexible, ubiquitous, elastic, cost-effective, and secure”) and if, simultaneously, IT receives more strategic attention than ever before (see chapters “The digital revolution: how technological trends change the business world” and “No business without IT: IT is the central and indispensable driver of entrepreneurial value creation”), then—from our point of view—the current IT department, located on the second or third management level is very poorly positioned for the digital transformation. We are of the opinion that the classic IT department has become obsolete and that the remaining tasks of corporate IT are better suited for a central function, which—in view of the ever-increasing importance of information technology for the company as a whole—should be anchored close to the executive board.

Keywords: Business Department; Entrepreneurial Value Creation; Digital Transformation; Business Units; Executive Board Positions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96187-3_11

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