MIS as a discipline has not yet developed a tradition of historical research, Historical analyses broaden our understanding of the processes by which information technology is introduced into organizations and of the forces that shape its use. Paramount among these processes are those Schumpeter called "creative destruction." These are events that change entire organizations and industries. The end product of a Schumpeterian process is called a "dominant design," a new configuration of an organization's technology, strategy, and structure. A dominant design is manifested in several ways: a new organizational infrastructure, new functionality, new products, new services, new production functions, or new cost structures. By changing the basis of competition in the industry, a firm that institutes a dominant design secures an initial competitive edge. Although the understanding of these processes is central to the concerns of many researchers and practitioners in the field, the information systems research literature contains very few examples of historical analyses of this type. A contingency framework is developed for conducting a class of information technology-based historical studios that focuses on innovation and competition within an industry.
Historical research offers perspectives on phenomena that are unavailable by any other methodological means. They reflect the cultural circumstances and ideological assumptions that underlie phenomena and the role played by key decision makers together with long-term economic, social, and political forces in creating them. Each of these benefits is accompanied by limitations such as, in most cases, a lack of mathematical tractability. The careful application of historical methods can overcome some of these limitations. A seven-step methodology is proposed: begin with focusing questions, specify the domain, gather evidence, critique the evidence, determine patterns, tell the story, and write the transcript.
The Bank of America Corp. literally changed the banking industry during the 1950s by means of its ERMA and IBM 702 computer systems. These innovations in information technology resulted in a dominate design that helped keep the Bank of America Corp. in the lead for over a decade and a half They were the collective work of a leader, Clark Beise, a maestro, AlZipf, and a group of supertechs, all of whom became the prototypes for these crucial roles. Bank of America Corp. was the first organization, among a selected few, to successfully negotiate the innovation cascade leading from crisis to a dominant IT design. Due in large part to IBM's failure to deliver a fully operational operating system for its 360/65, however, coinciding with the leadership's attention toward international markets, in the late 1960s the Bank of America Corp. lost its lead. After several decades in the trough," as a result of aggressive investment and leadership, the bank re-emerged as a strong competitor. This story of achieving alignment in strategy and structure by means of technological innovation, of the almost tragic breaking of that alignment, and of fervent efforts made to gain realignment illuminates some of the most important lessons of IT management that can be learned from the field's relatively recent, but dramatic, history.
This article discusses the evolution of airline reservations systems--from their inception as manually maintained inventories of seat availability, through their description as "anticompetitive weapons" used "unlawfully" to obtain and exercise monopoly power. The evolutionary perspective reveals interdependent industry, company, and technology forces that shaped the pattern of competition. Although many facets of the airline experience are unique to the air transport industry, the authors identify three features with broad implications for the strategic use of information technology. First, large installed processing capacity can be a source of economies of scale and scope. Second, established technical competence is a necessary requirement for gaining competitive advantage. Finally, sustainable advantage need not be the result of extraordinary vision, but the result of consistent exploitation of opportunities revealed during the evolution of adaptable systems.