Perennializing Information Technology Infrastructures: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

Abstract

In an era of heightened uncertainty and urgency, robust and flexible information technology infrastructures (ITI) – arrangements of shared IT services and technical components that power and support an organization’s strategy and processes – are vital to organizations. ITI play key strategic roles, are at the core of business operations and directly affect performance. However, managing the evolution and sustaining transformations of ITI can be very challenging. To cope with this sustainability challenge, organizations must develop specific dynamic capabilities to sustain ITI and their evolution under turbulent and changing business contexts. Still, the question for managers is: What actions should be deployed to sustain ITI and their transformations? Twenty key organizational actions that were identified by twenty-nine ITI experts, were grouped into three interrelated vectors: (1) Watching and developing knowledge and know-how to sustain ITI; (2) Visioning and governing ITI; (3) Standardizing and adopting a flexible approach to ITI.