IS Leadeship Roles

In my 2nd post, it really challenge me a lot to explain what I have understand about the Technical Aspects of Leadership (IS Leadership Roles according to CSC) and Social Aspects of Leadership (IS Managerial Roles according to Mintzberg). As instructed by Dr.Gamboa, we must find out all of these.

First, let's talk about Social Aspects of Leadership (IS Managerial Roles according to Mintzberg). But before that we must know first who is Henry Mintzberg. Henry Mintzberg is a Canadian Academic wh0 was trained as a mechanical engineer, wrote his PhD thesis at the MIT Sloan School of Management analysing the actual work habits and time management of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs).

According to Minztberg, managers undertake activities to achieve the objectives of the organization. Mintzberg's role typology described manager's job in terms of varoius roles:

1. Interpersonal Roles - roles managers assume to coordinate and interact with subordinates and provide direction to the organization.

2. Informational Roles - associated with the tasks needed to obtain and transmit information for management of organization.

3. Decisional Roles - associated with the methods managers use to plan strategyand utilized resources to achieve goals.

In other way, Mintzberg's empirical research involved observing and analysing the activities of the CEO's of five private and semi-public organizations. To make the description short, Mintzberg first identified six characteristics of the job of the managers:

1. managers are always under tight time pressure.
2. Managerial activities are often self-initiated.
3. CEOs prefer action.
4. They prefer vebal communication.
5. They maintain relationships with their subordinates.
6. They have limited involvement in the execution of works although they initiate many of
the decisions.

From this, Mintzberg then identify ten separate roles in Managerial Works. Each Roles defined as an organized collection of behaviours belonging to an identifiable function or position. He separated this roles into three subcategories as mention in the above paragraph:

1. Interpersonal Roles
a. Figurehead - performs ceremonial and symbolic duties as head of the organization.
b. Leader - foster a proper work atmosphere and motivates subordinates
c. Liaison - develops and maintains a network of external contacts to gather information;

2. Informational Roles
d. Monitor -gathers internal and external information relevant to the organisation;
e. Disseminator - transmits factual and value based information to subordinates;
f. Spokeperson - communicates to the outside world on performance and policies.

3. Decisional Roles
g. Entrepreneur - designs and initiates change in the organisation;
h. Disturbance Handler - deals with unexpected events and operational breakdowns;
i. Resource Allocator - controls and authorises the use of organisational resources;
j. Negotiator - participates in negotiation activities with other organisations and individuals.

In his 1973 study, Mintzberg declared that the Manager's position is always the starting point in organisational analysis. He then added that managerial roles are sequential -
First, manager makes interpersonal contact through his formal status;
Second, this contact allows information processing;
Then, it leads to decision making.

Through time changes, both information technology and competition continue to change the role of the information systems executive.

In 1996, CSC (Compuer Science Corporation) has suggested six new IS Leadership Roles which are required to execute IS's future agenda:

1. Chief architect. The chief architect designs future possibilities for the business. The primary work of the chief architect is to design and evolve the IT infrastructure so that it will expand the range of future possibilities for the business, not define specific business outcomes.

2. Change leader. The change leader orchestrates resources to achieve optimal implementation of the future. The essential role of the change leader is to orchestrate all those resources that will be needed to execute the change program.

3. Product developer. The product developer helps define the company’s place in the emerging digital economy.The product developer must "sell" the idea to a business partner, and together they can set up and evaluate business experiments, which are initially operated out of IS. Whether the new methods are adopted or not, the company will learn from the experiments and so move closer to commercial success in emerging digital markets.

4. Technology provocateur. The technology provocateur embeds IT into the business strategy. The technology provocateur works with senior business executives to bring IT and realities of the IT marketplace to bear on the formation of strategy for the business. He is a senior business executive who understands both the business and IT at a deep enough level to integrate
the two perspectives in discussions about the future course of the business. He have a wealth of experience in IS disciplines, so they understand at a fundamental level the capabilities of IT and how IT impacts the business.

5. Coach. The coach teaches people to acquire the skillsets they will need for the future. Coaches have two basic responsibilities:
teaching people how to learn, so that they can become self-sufficient, and providing team leaders with staff able to do the IT-related work of the business. A mechanism that assists both is the centre of excellence - a small group of people with a particular competence or skill, with a coach responsible for their growth and development.

6. Chief operating strategist. The chief operating strategist invents the future with senior management. The chief operating strategist is the top IS executive who is focused on the future agenda of the IS organisation. The strategist has parallel responsibilities related to helping the business design the future, and then delivering it. The most important, and least understood, parts of the role have to do with the interpretation of new technologies and the IT marketplace, and the bringing of this understanding into the development
of the digital business strategy for the organisation.


Alas, hopefully i have explain well in this post.. hehe..



REFERENCES :

http://www.csupomona.edu/~wcweber/301/301slide/ch01301/sld022.htm
http://www.provenmodels.com/88/ten-managerial-roles/mintzberg
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.2007