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Introduction
Leadership is understood as the lumping together of individual traits, demonstrated behavior and operational attributes that enable an individual to attain prominence.
The management of information technology organizations is faced with myriad of challenges; these problems may be solved through various ways depending on the organizations. Many organizations have adopted project management office and governance structures inside the organization.
A good leader is one who has a vision, understands the vision, builds the vision and sells the vision and sustains the vision. The most fundamental challenges faced by IT leaders range from viruses, technological hackers and employees apathy.
First and foremost, the most critical challenge of business executives in the business sector in the introduction of new model of management. In the case studies, this is evident in the adoption of PMO and ERP.
The information technology industry is faced with the problem of cost pressure and the executives are concentrating on cost reduction strategies which are geared towards facilitating the supply chain that will directly lead into to the decrease in the cost of distribution.
The increased accessibility and the use of mobile phones has led to the decline of personal computers, these change in the environment of operation creates challenges which can be addressed with projects. PMO is introduced to provide standardization in managing these projects.
PMO was a new office but was not complete and hence there were no specific purposes and responsibilities. The challenges facing PMO are lack of experts to cope with the new development in the field.
Proving the value of PMO is a major challenge and also the way it works, this is because of lack of earlier data. The implementation of PMO also proved a major challenge; this is due to the fact that it went against the organizational culture.
There were a lot of forces who greatly opposed the PMO since it was considered new and all individuals including the managers had little experience with formal management process and also there was limited experience.
There was also the challenge in the implementation of the PMO. The implementation of the PMO has failed many leaders in the information technology sector; these may be due to the lack of substantial amount of money to execute, the slow pace of implementation.
Another project that required implementation was the Enterprise resource planning (ERP) budget by Cisco, which began by the establishment team. Then there was the e-advantage by Boeing. The people who carry blame in the field of information technology are the Chief information officer.
The first problem faced by the Boeing was therefore emergence of highly successful competition from the airbus; this challenge presented the challenge of product differentiation.
Just like any other field, leadership in the information technology is quite challenging, this is largely associated with the dynamic behavior of information technology field. Overcoming leadership in the field of information technology is tantamount to taking information technology to a greater height (Roepke, 2007).
The greatest challenge that is faced by the information technology leadership is the dynamism of the environment. The field of information technology is fluid; there is always the emergence of new technologies in the information technology field which often renders the existing technologies obsolete.
The emergence of Lap top computers led to the obsolescence of the desk top model. This at times might result to massive loss in case the obsolete computers are still in stock (Anderson, 2009).
IT Leadership Challenges
For any company to be successful, it should have an environmental culture. Innovation is necessary in the field of IT, since it is an ever-growing field and often with several dynamics, the leadership of IT companies is faced with the challenge of innovativeness.
This culture of innovativeness will enable the IT Company to remain relevant in the market and to favorably compete with other firms in the industry. The spirit of innovation in the IT sector will enable a company to be customer focused, market oriented and technically innovated.
Leadership in the field of information technology is faced with the challenge of the ever evolving role of IT. The dynamism in the field of IT has made it difficult for the Chief information officers to formulate a specific strategy that will guide the operations of the company.
Lack of specific strategy in any firm will make it impossible for business managers to make decisions about the available opportunities and the necessary or imminent challenges which are important in the success of the business.
This dynamism is a challenge to the business leader since it may not be easy to respond to the changes and costs accompanying it, this is, for example, responding to the market demands and the supply chain negotiations.
Labor Mobility
Labor mobility and ability or rather disheartened employees is also another challenge that faces the IT leadership. Since employees are interested with a better pay.
With the changing nature of the market places, employees might be tempted to change to new places that offer better services and opportunities. Since every organization is interested in getting the best human resource, this may have the effect of wage pressure which may strain the companies proceeds.
The executives may have to balance between making decent profits and competitively paying its workers to prevent mobility especially in the periods of turbulent business.
The introduction of delta technology is necessary to keep employees motivated. The issue of innovation in the information technology sector presents a challenge to the business executives because they will have to match the new innovation to the business strategies and may also lead to costs in the time of implementation.
Data Security Issue
Another challenge is managing risk situations; the threat of viruses and the ever increasing possibility especially after 2003 following the discovery of the blaster worm virus which was the first of its kind to be delivered through network pipe system.
Consequently, the growing concerns on instability in the offshore outsourcing also demand more resources, time and attention. Also the idea of keeping network free form intruders is a source of challenge to the Chief Information Officers (CIO) (Muller, 2011).
The issue of security is also emerging as a challenge to the leaders in the IT sector. This has proved to be a difficult problem to be contained. Since information technology facilitates the storage of data and this has been threatened by the problem of providing necessary back up and disaster recovery mechanisms.
Organizational Challenges
There are also organizational problems; most of the business leaders are delinked from the mainstream organization and hence may not be in touch with the employees and this may at times leads to dismal performance. There is also the problem of resource. This may be as a result of the adoption of bottom line at the expense of top line system of management.
In the case of IBMs regime of transformation; turnaround and growth is a good example of lean and agile organizational structure. The company faced the problem of product complexity and organizational silos for management.
The IBM also faced the threat from emerging technologies and their efforts to counter it proved futile, they also faced the challenges of quality problems and diminishing returns.
This provoked the need to cut costs which included the employee perks and personnel reduction where other executives offered to voluntarily step down. This was aimed at maintaining lean staff; other jobs were saved by the invention of the integrated systems solution corporation.
The IBM, for example, had about 20 separate business units and made a lot of sales. The sales were accomplished through different processes but which achieved common objectives. Since executives would want to respond to the ever increasing and faster business cycle, then the operating and the management processes must be not only streamlined, but also integrated and synchronized to the cycle time of the business to fit the demands of the business for growth and expansion.
The period of change in strategy and growth by the Atekpc is a clear manifestation of how a company adopts new strategies which may involve restructuring the existing system for the company to remain competitive and to make it remain relevant in the market.
Atekpc had to introduce PMO into their model of management and this restructured its Human resource structure. The main challenge here is that changing from one model to another or adopting new model may require a lot of resources for implementing it and training human resource who ca fit into the new model.
Business leaders in the IT sector make changes only based on the market availability and ignore the impact of the changes on the entire business system which comprise the partners and the suppliers. The desire by the business executives to introduce new ideas is hampered by the existing organizational structure, the incentive regime and cultures and these lead to failure in the execution of the new strategy.
The rigid model of leadership and authority in a business venture is a tight challenge facing the business leaders. The two models of leadership and decision making are centralization and decentralization; they may also be called vertical or horizontal model of decision making.
Hierarchical or vertical model of decision making is considered less costly and can facilitate free flow of information from bottom up and to top down. Some forms of decision making present a challenge since they do not factor in the circumstance when the business firm expands.
The case of IBM illustrates the deficiencies of authority and leadership. The executives were delinked from the decision making chain and isolated from the ever emerging groups. This is substituted by the heavy reliance from the corporate staff.
The reliance on consensus kind of decision making makes it difficult for decisions to be executed. This delegation of duties and responsibilities and also the delegation of the power of decision making by the executives will make the executives out of system, although this led to decrease in speed of the decision making and the business executives are held accountable for the collective efforts.
Another challenge in leadership on IT is the ability to devise a governance system (Overby, 2009). This is evident in the implementation of the ERP by the Cisco Company and they achieved it through proper governance system. Governance may range from the outsourcing of certain skills, technologies and IT capabilities.
The choosing of partner by the Cisco was a fundamental step and which led to a great zeal by the employees to support the ERP program. IT governance is the fundamental tool in the realizing of business potential. IT potential is defined as to include the mechanism and measures that enhance the day to day efficiency and effectiveness (Applegate, Austin & Soule, 2009, p. 1).
Traditionally, the projects had been considered as cost saving but it is no longer the case since with the widespread inventions and innovations which has led to the introduction of new products, and growth of new customers. It is these changes that challenge the IT leadership since it may result in the overhaul of the existing system and projects.
On the Boeing e-Enabled advantage, Boeing was facing a lot of challenges like the emergence of the European based airbus, and the terrorism attack of September 11 which led to emergence of strong regulation in the air craft sector.
The major challenge that it faced was product differentiation. It unveiled a new strategy that will enhance efficiency and increase its profitability alongside differentiating its product in the market.
This could be realized through the adoption of an e-Enabled environment where the aspects of its airlines and its airline suppliers could be integrated through information technology by creating a networking environment. This could enable Boeing to operate efficiently and also differentiae its services from other services.
Another challenge facing Boeing was that of translating its ideas into process. This was to be achieved through breaking down the silence of its communication among the various business units.
The shift of Boeing from being both commercial and defense to being only commercial was also another serious challenge to its market and customer base. This had the threat of putting the company into a vulnerable position in the industrial cycle. The merger of Boeing with Rockwell international cooperation aerospace led to a shift back into defense work.
The introduction of the e-Enabled environment was by itself a challenge. This is because it required convincing customers to adopt it as a service provider; it also had to convince all skeptical customers that the technology of e-Enabled environment would add value to the business service and last it had to separate values created by the airline from the value created by airplanes themselves.
As in the case of Ford Company their main concentration was the supply chain strategy which involved the redesigning of its supply chain. This was necessitated by the several challenges which include encroaching of their markets by the foreign based manufacturers, increased overcapacity in the industry and expansion of their export oriented market.
This forced them to embark on the project Ford 2000 which included matching their subsidiaries in order to reduce costs and to introduce IT as a major compliment in the operations which was placed in the process of reengineering the organization.
As in the case of atekpc, IT value has been achieved through IT project. This project has the tendency and privilege of reporting directly to the president or the vice president.
The project management will facilitate the efficient making of decisions and which can be subjected to review on periodic basis. Atekpc was forced by pressure to adopt the PMO. Despite having the material resources, they lacked the management and human resource to implement the project. It is argued that the presence of IT governance will translate to improved decision making in the business (House, 2004).
In the case of Volkswagen, their main area of concern was marketing and they were preoccupied with it to the extent that they reduced funding in some important departments like IT as a measure to save on costs which could be in turn be used in the marketing of the brand and the company (Hoving, 2010).
To reduce these costs on IT department they hired the service of an IT firm perot system which was responsible for the maintenance, repairs and operation. This had the net effect of reducing staff in the IT department.
The Volkswagen America adopted the e-business teams which they used in their marketing, the perot systems and the e-business teams were aimed at enhancing the IT department, but the performance and the effectiveness of the IT department could not be guaranteed due to the lack of staff and central controlling entity.
Another challenge that comes out in the case study of Volkswagen is that the business initiatives devised were equal. This led to the grouping of projects into one similar enterprise, and this was noticed by the digital business council which is charged with the responsibility of grouping projects. These projects, when lumped together limited their chances of completion.
Another challenge learned from the Volkswagen America was the prioritizing of projects. There were complains about several activities prioritized being sidelined from funding.
The implementation of SAP had negative impact on the funding of IT projects. They concentrated on less important matters like the warehouse which never occupied the place in the order of priorities.
Instead of the firm paying attention to the advertisement and marketing of the business products, most managers relied on the production of new models to rescue them from any market difficulty and this was considered short term and could not meet the demand of the company.
The executives instead preferred to establish their own IT firm known as gedas which was establish only to manage IT services to Volkswagen owned companies.
Conclusion
Business executives should be in position to understand that the any business opportunity comes with a lot of challenges since a business by itself is a challenge. As such they should devise some ways of countering these challenges.
These challenges may stem from factors like deficits in the management system, organizational structure, the dynamism which might be brought about by technological changes and inventions and the business culture.
These should be overcome through countermeasures like streamlining the administrative process and integrating business departments and systems.
The challenges in business leadership may be corrected by adopting better ways of decision making, having quality human resource and changing according to the change in business environment business.
References
Anderson, L.S. (2009). Nurturing the IT Culture: the Leadership Challenge, national center for technology planning. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Applegate, L.M., Austin, R.D., & Soule, D.L. (2009). Corporate Information Strategy and Management. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
House, J. R. (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: the GLOBE study of 62 societies Program. New York, NY: SAGE.
Hoving, R. (2007). Information Technology Leadership Challenges Past, Present, and Future. New Jersey, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Muller, H. (2011). The Transformational CIO: Leadership and Innovation Strategies for IT Executives in a Rapidly Changing World. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Overby, S. (2009). Globalization: New Management Challenges Facing IT leaders. Web.
Roepke, R. (2007). Aligning the IT, human resource with Business vision: the leadership initiative, 3M Company. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
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