Ariel I. La Paz

Exploring the dark side of IS in achieving organizational agility

exploring the dark side of is in achieving organizational agility organizational agility Based on previous research, we define organizational agility as a set of processes that allows an organization to sense changes in the internal and external environment, respond efficiently and effectively in a timely and cost-effective manner, and learn from the experience to improve the compe-tencies of the organization. 1 The basic logic in pursuing organizational agility is this: The organization must be alert to perceive incoming signals from its internal and external environments. Then, it needs to process the signals and respond adequately, recognizing the impact that each piece of information may contain. Responding reactively and proactively may require a realignment of resources, processes, and even objectives if the changes are significant. With the incoming information processed, the organization has the opportunity to learn and improve its competencies. Compe-tency refers to an organizations abilities to effectively perceive, respond, realign , and learn from the experience of participating in dynamic environments. Agile organizations will move quickly in this cyclical process in near real-time sequences, prioritizing the actions by weighting the impact of signals of change and challenges, while considering costs. Perception is the ability to sense changes in the environment. As a first step, organizations need to understand their internal and external environments to sense changes and trends that affect them, the sources and types of signals, and their characteristics (frequency, strength, form, etc). It is easier to perceive strong and visible signals rather than intermittent and weak ones. The role of IS in perception is to capture large amounts of data, which can be retrieved from multiple sources, in multiple formats, and make the data accessible, with limited compatibility problems. For example, POS (Point Of Sale) systems collect data about where, when, and what products are sold; organizations can track and OrganizatiOnal agility is currently a popular topic in the academic and practitioner communities. While Information Systems (IS) has been identified as having a positive impact in the pursuit of the goal of the agile organization, we also want to present a set of forces that may act against agility by means of inefficient or ineffective design, use or understanding of the role of IS in the process of acquiring signals, responding and learning from experience. Here we mean IS to refer to both systems and technologies that support business functions such as collecting, creating, editing, processing, storing, …

Editorial: an ontology of E-commerce - mapping a relevant corpus of knowledge

The development of the e-commerce field revolutionized the practice of commerce by the addition of the possibility to connect buyers and sellers in virtual environments for the trade of goods and services. The possibility to easily access information about products and reach customers globally created new business possibilities and transformed business processes. At the same time it brought important challenges about security, privacy, legal compliance, etc. -all by the simple addition of the prefix

How to Become a Strategist CIO

The strategist CIO is one type of top information system or IT executive. Strategists can exploit the use of information systems and technologies by participating in business strategy formulation. Scholars and practitioners have described the strategist CIO as the ideal type for todays organizations and globalized challenges, but little information exists on how to become a strategist CIO. This article describes the main features of strategist CIOs and explains how some CIOs have succeeded in becoming strategists.

Aligning Biomedical Informatics with Clinical and Translational Science

Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) rests largely on information flowing smoothly at multiple levels, in multiple directions, across multiple locations. Hence, Biomedical Informatics (BI) is seen as a backbone that can help to manage the information flows for the process of translation. However, the two concepts may end up being applied incongruently, if uncoordinated. This paper summarizes the objectives for CTS and BI, and provides a mechanism to harmonize their different objectives and guide the design of BI architectures for CTS.