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‘Innovation with information technology: a double edged sword’
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Inaugural lecture by Albert Boonstra, Professor of Information Management, with a focus on the relationship between IT, organizations and people
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Tuesday 24 May, 4:15 p.m.
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Academy Building, Broerstraat 5, Groningen
Information technology can be a powerful innovation tool for organizations.
At the same time, IT projects are infamous for their high failure rate.
Research has proven that effective deployment of IT is dependent on the harmony between technology and organization.
Prof. Albert Boonstra of the Faculty of Economics and Business will explain what this harmony entails during his inaugural lecture.
He will present a model that demonstrates where harmonization issues can arise and how these issues can be dealt with.
Innovation driven by information technology can involve updating existing products and services or redesigning business processes and organizational structures.
Examples are the use of databases for CRM and using search engines for diagnosing patients.
There are, however, also examples of problematic or even failed information technology projects, such as the Electronic Patient File, the road pricing system and IT issues suffered by the police.
Moreover, the information systems deployed often fail to meet the innovation expectations.
Information technology can cause some organizations to become inflexible, uniform, dependent and/or bureaucratic.
To make effective use of information technology, it is crucial that the technology and the organization are in harmony and reinforce each other.
Some organizations have proven well able to achieve this harmonization, while others have been less successful.
In the latter cases, the technology is inadequately adapted to the organization and too little attention is given to the organizational change that is needed to be able to actually benefit from information technology.
Albert Boonstra
Professor Boonstra (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1959) graduated in economics and law (Groningen) and obtained a Master’s degree and a PhD at the university of Glasgow. He is affiliated to the Faculty of Economics and Business in Groningen as researcher, teacher and programme director of the Master programme Business Administration. Boonstra specializes in the organizational issues that surround the use of advanced information technologies, especially enterprise wide and inter-organizational systems. He is also interested in social, political and organizational change implications of IT implementations.
