Can Technology Transform Managers Into Leaders In The Knowledge-Economy?

Today, technology has changed the business world ten-fold. Every day there is an easier way to process, access, and disseminate information. Technology, now referred to as, Information technology, is an internal resource that increasingly facilitates organizational communication and improves the search for knowledge.

Executives can implement information technology in organizations to enhance interactions among organizational members and departments. Furthermore, executives are effectively a role model for their followers and they are often admired and respected by subordinates. Thus, information technology could be perceived as a critical resource by organizational members because an executive becomes a role model who uses technology to build shareholder value.

By Mostafa Sayyadi | Chartered Managers Canada

One tool for executives to use when considering on lessoning the gaps between success and possible failure, is to implement information technology and become a change agent. Executives, in fact, contribute to overall organizational performance through implementing information technology to increase knowledge management performance and help close the gap between success and possible failure. Many executives see knowledge management performance as an outcome of various factors such as information technology. Furthermore, executive are encouraged to improve the bottom line and increase knowledge management performance. Every executive knows that the focus on firms’ financial performance alone is insufficient as firms need to also consider a range of other factors such as knowledge management performance that is also reflective of their overall organizational performance.

In order for executives to apply the knowledge gained in this article, I incorporate knowledge management performance as targets to break through performance gaps in organizations. Scholars have left an array of managerial implications for executives such as the fact that knowledge management performance is determined thorough aspects such as active response to environmental changes, production and service quality, customer focus, innovation, and providing learning and growth opportunities for employees. Armed with knowledge management performance tool, executives can increase overall organizational performance. Executives, in fact, help followers propel new ideas and solutions through implementing information in order to store and retrieve organizational knowledge. In doing this, executives act as organizational leader who implement information technology through employing IT professionals and allocating more budgetary resources to exploit knowledge management performance.

How to Successfully Implement Information Technology?

The only thing we know is the technological change is on the rise. With the inception of new technology while products become obsolete so quickly today, executives are staid with managing the future that is somewhat evasive.

Executives can develop relationships and interactions within companies, set desired expectations and inspire followers to identify further opportunities in their business environment. When executives view information technology as a vital important organizational resource that facilitates organizational communications and improves the search for knowledge they begin to see opportunities for successful business ventures.

Executives also spend a great deal of time conceptualizing strategic endeavors and one scholar by the name of Selby Noseworthy affirms that the strategic role of organizational leaders is enhanced when the implementation of information technology successfully occurs at the right time and place. Thus, organizational leaders raise the levels of awareness on the importance of technology and empower people to improve the effectiveness of information technology implementation within organizations. Therefore, I suggest that organizational leaders positively affect information technology implementation within organizations. Thus, executives must understand that effective leadership can highly support information technology to successfully implement the projects of knowledge management and, therefore, remain competitive.

Executives agree with Jeroen Schepers, Martin Wetzels and Ko de Ruyter. These scholars conducted an empirical research in which they found that when executives adopt leadership at the highest organizational levels to manage information technology, the organization can see increased knowledge management performance, better satisfaction by employees and customers, and most importantly enhance their own effectiveness as leaders.

Managing Organizational Knowledge with Information Technology

Information Technology is the new competitive advantage and the organizations that embrace it will survive while those that do not will find their organizations facing possible acquisition. For example, information technology is a resource for knowledge integration. With knowledge integration, executives can sustain current operations while preparing future endeavors. Information technology, as a competitive resource, encourages people to embark on technological facilities such as shared electronic workspaces to provide new ideas and possible solutions for solving problems. Problems that may leave an organization debunk and less competitive. For example, academic scholars, such as Ashish Malik and Venkataraman Nilakant found that the lack of innovative workplaces adversely impacts on the organization’s capability to integrate knowledge, and they suggest that organizations use information technology to facilitate better knowledge integration.

Information technology, therefore, plays a critical role in integrating knowledge by executives and is also aligned with the knowledge-based view of the firm which not only builds upon the dissemination of information but also how it is restored and retrieved.

FIGURE 1. The Relationship between Leadership, Information Technology and Knowledge Management

In an industry research in a wide range of industries, located in United States, both leaders and employees were surveyed. Consistent with predictions, the findings supported this executive based model to work because leaders play a strategic role in enhancing corporate knowledge management performance through implementing information technology to develop a more innovative climate and managing effective tools to acquire knowledge from external sources. For the executive’s corner, these results suggest new insights to identify leadership as a primary driver, which influences corporate knowledge management performance that matters to executives that care.

In conclusion, executive that manage knowledge and use it as an important driving force for business success find their organization to be more competitive and on the cutting edge. However, knowledge management performance in organizations is determined by a set of critical success factors, one of which is the strategic dimension of leadership. Effective leaders can enhance knowledge management performance with the implementation of information technology. This article advances the current literature on leadership, information technology and knowledge management by offering novel insights into how effective leadership leads to better information technology which leads to better knowledge management. In fact, when executives implement information technology, they aim to create more knowledge. They apply information systems in their decision-making processes in order to investigate various alternatives and options. Engaging in leadership can also provide executives with a high degree of freedom for subordinates to explore their own new ideas and solutions to organizational opportunities while solving problems. This provides new and more innovative solutions for organizational problems as they arise. Leaders, in fact, inculcate human capital into social capital to exert change at the organizational level.

References

Noseworthy, S 1998, Transformational leadership and information technology: implications for secondary school Leaders, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

Malik, A., & Nilakant, V. (2015). Knowledge integration mechanisms in high-technology business-to-business services vendors. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 1-10.

Schepers, J., Wetzels, M., & de Ruyter, K. (2005). Leadership styles in technology acceptance. Journal of Managing Service Quality, 15(6), 496-508.