It was 150 years ago that Sir Edward Tylor first referenced culture (in an anthropological sense) in his book Primitive Culture. Then, 80 years later, Elliott Jacques, Ph.D., published The Changing Culture of a Factory, introducing organizational culture as the “… customary and traditional way of thinking and doing of things…and which new members must learn, and at least partially accept, in order to be accepted into service in the firm."1 Today, another 70 years later, organizational culture is recognized as the most significant of all IT governance critical success factors.
This last finding implies that if we ignore the impact of culture on IT governance, then almost anything we do from an IT governance perspective may very well be doomed in spite of our best efforts. This state of affairs is amplified in digital transformation and in the governance of emerging technology, given the pressing need for today’s organizations to increasingly adopt digital—to maintain their competitiveness or, better, to enhance it—and for these activities to create the diverse kinds of value expected of them.
In a digital transformation context, the issue has become much less about having transformational efforts fit into an existing culture, like Jacques proposed, and much more about what changes in an organization’s norms and behaviors may be required for digital transformation and emerging technology initiatives to be successful in the interests of the sustainability of the organization.
In my recent Journal article “The Sheer Gravity of Underestimating Culture as an IT Governance Risk,” I explore the impact of culture on effective IT governance in quite some depth, concluding that corporate culture is instrumental in effective enterprise IT governance, and that it is entirely as significant a stream of work as is the actual implementation effort. For example, if the norms and behaviors of the organization are contrary to the norms and behaviors required for the effective deployment of the technology, then a cultural change will be required for the technology to be successful. The art is ultimately in how to articulate the existing corporate culture, how to articulate the desired culture and how to close the gap between these two points.
In his book Transforming IT Culture, Frank Wander notes that, “We are unable to break free of a cultural model that embraces process warmly while coldly treating people, thus perpetuating a cycle of project failure in this human-centric, emotional endeavor.”2 Whether we are talking about traditional IT initiatives or digitally transformational IT initiatives, we should take note that as much attention should be paid to the process of implementing the technology as should be paid to ensuring that people—incidentally, the very mechanism expected to drive value from those IT initiatives—are warmly and appropriately integrated into the otherwise cold IT initiative or digital transformation program.
Read Guy Pearce’s recent Journal article:
“The Sheer Gravity of Underestimating Culture as an IT Governance Risk,” ISACA Journal, volume 3, 2019.
1 Jaques, E.; The Changing Culture of a Factory, Tavistock Publications Ltd., UK, 1951
2 Wander, F.; Transforming IT Culture, John Wiley & Sons Inc., USA, 2013
