Organizational Structure That Support Strategic Initiatives

Organizational Structure

• Organizational employees must work closely together to develop strategic initiative that create competitive advantages.
• Ethics and security are two fundamentals building blocks that organizations must base their business upon.

IT Role and Resposibilities

• Information technology is a relatively new functional area, having only been around formally for around 40 years.
• Recent IT related strategic positions :

             * Chief Information Officer (CIO)

                    - Overseas all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals

                       and objectives.

                 * Broad CIO functions include :

                        - Manager - ensuring the delivery of all IT projects on time and within budget

                        - Leader - ensuring the strategic vision of IT is in linewith the strategic vision of the 

                                         organization.

                        - Communicator - building and maintaining strong executive relationship.

• Average CIO compensation by industry.

• What concerns CIOs the most.

             * Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

                      - Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability

                         of IT.

             * Chief Security Officer (CSO)

                     - Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems.

             * Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)

                     - Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information.

             * Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)

                     - Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization's knowledge.

• Skills pivotal for sucess in executive IT roles

The Gap Between Business Personnel and IT Personnel

• Business personnel possess expertise in functional areas such as marketing, accounting and sales.
• IT personnel have the technological expertise.
• This typically causes a communications gap between the business personnel an IT personnel

Improving Communications

• Business personnel must seek to increase their understanding of IT.
• IT personnel must seek to increase their understanding of the business.
• It is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure effective communication between business personnel and IT personnel.

Organizational Fundamentals-Ethics and Security

• Ethics and security are two fundamental building blocks that organizations must base theit business on to be sucessful.
• In recent years, such events as the Enron and Martha Stewart, along with 9/11 have shed new light on the meaning of ethics  and security.

• Ethics - the principles and standards thaht guide our behaviour toward other people.
• Privacy is a major ethical issues

                 *Privacy - the right to be left alone when you want to be, to have control over your own

                                    personel possessions, and not to be observedd without your consent.

• Issues affected by technology advances

            

                * Intellectual property

                          - Intangible creative work that is embodied in 

                            physical form.

             * Copyright

                       - The legal protection afforded an expression 

                          of an idea, such as song, video game, and

                          some types of proprietary documents.               

          

            *Fair use doctrine

                    - In certain situations, it is legal to

                       use copyrighted materials.                       

           * Pirated software

                  - The unauthorized use, duplication,

                     distribution, or sale of copyrighted

                     software.    

          * Counterfeit software

                 - Software that is manufactured to                                   

                    look like the real thing and sold

                    such.                      

END OF CHAPTER 5 !!    

PEACE YO!!