Expertise and innovation: Information technology strategies in the financial services sector

Book reviews standing' (p 112). Perhaps, but would the same be experienced by a reader? Especially as later, under refinements to company discounting, we are informed 'however, for most companies the debt is negligible or non-existent' (p 123). A couple of pages later we are told that expected returns on the stock market for a particular company can be obtained from the figures available from Companies House - - well, only if you believe in random walks, but even then we are not told this. One can derive actual (p 137) past returns but how these become expected returns is unclear. Chapter 4 looks at the pitfalls, misuse and abuse of DCF techniques, while the following chapter does discuss the, very useful and much ignored, issue of flexibility. If this book does nothing else but raise management's attention to this, then it will have done some good. However, again, the use of decision trees as a flexibility assessment tool is well known and a lot of the problems with them are glossed over. Chapter 6 heralds the much anticipated measurement of intangibles. An intangible 'is anything that is difficult to measure' (p 196) and the key to intangibles is to ask 'what can you do now that you could not do before?'. Any intangible will result in: higher prices for the product or service; more sales; retention of custom; saving of money from existing products; or new business from new products. This is fine, but can any of this be estimated ex ante with any degree of confidence? The worked example of intangible calculations is interesting. Chapter 7 looks at information gathering and rightly identifies the need for good data to feed into the techniques proposed but offers no magic solutions in how to do this. The final chapters briefly address benefits realization, give a worked example of the IA method and discuss 'the' other techniques - there are only two, return on management and the customer resource life cycle, both of which are found wanting. The book has no conclusions. It is difficult to find much in the book to recommend. The authors do not claim to have done more than provide a structure 306

within which a number of very well-known techniques are located. As such this text achieves its aims. But there are other texts which do the same despite what these authors would have us believe, and there are many books (for example Northcott, 1992) which better explain much of the central portion of this book. There is not enough here for anyone really wanting to undertake the task in practice and too much repetition and slack wording for serious students of the process. There is no doubt that the evaluation of investments in IT is problematic, poorly done and a top concern of management, and that any text which seeks to enlighten the process is welcome, but this is not the text or the method I would choose. The discussion on flexibility is good and the worked example is interesting but these are not really sufficient to commend this book over alternative ones.

Dr Philip Powell Information Systems Research Unit, Warwick Business School, UK

References Farbey, B, Land, F and Targett, D (1993) How to Assess your IT Investment Butterworth Heinemann Hogbin, G and Thomas, D (1994) Investing in Information Technology McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead Northcott, D (1992) Capital Investment Decision Making Academic Press, London

Expertise and Innovation: Information Technology Strategies in the Financial Services Sector R Fincham, J Fleck, R Proctor, H Scarbrough, M Tierney and R Williams Oxford University Press (1994) 334 pp £35.00 I S B N O 19 828904 9 Five years ago, I went to carry out a consultancy assignment for the managing director of a bank. At our first meeting he told me firmly that, if I was going to work with him, I had to read two books. He took from two large piles a copy of Shoshana Zuboff's In the Age o f the Smart Machine: The Future o f Work and Power and a copy of

Journal of Strategic Information Systems 1995 Volume 4 Number 3

Book reviews Chaos by James Gleich. I would like to think that, in the future, I will come across a managing director in the Financial Services sector handing out copies of this book on information management. Otherwise I suspect the readership will be limited mainly to academics and serious students. This would be a pity because the book contains some excellent cases and a rich array of theoretical material. The book is the product of a multidisciplinary E S R C / S E R C funded project conducted by six academics. Although the claim of multidisciplinarity is justified by the inclusion of computer scientists, the flavour of the book is organizational behaviour (OB). Although the book may make a significant contribution to OB, it is certainly a major achievement in the field of information management, which lacks case material and argumentation of this quality. The research is based on seven case studies, each describing the evolution of a major project in seven financial service companies located in S c o t l a n d . By c h o o s i n g a relatively compact sector, the authors have been able to place each case in the context of the sector and thereby develop an understanding of the sector itself. The projects are thus placed not only in the context of the company but also in the context of both the dynamically e v o l v i n g F i n a n c i a l S e r v i c e s S e c t o r in Scotland and in the developing information technology (IT) sector. Overall I believe the book will be significant because of its cohesion and richness of theoretical working of the case material. In the introductory section, the theme of 'Expertise' is introduced and elaborated. The perspective is a good one, enabling a cohesive approach to many IT managerial issues which often seem a j u m b l e of unconnected topics: information systems (IS) strategy; IS organization; relationship between experts and users; outsourcing; career structures etc. The section develops the theoretical 'context' in an authoritative manner, challenging at times the accepted

wisdom. The book introduces the seven cases relatively briefly. Three are in banks, two in insurance companies and two credit-card operations. The sections that follow delve more deeply into those cases relevant to the theme of the section. This working of the case material to gain theoretical insight is organized in three parts. Part I - - Strategy includes sections on 'the negotiation of the sector', 'structural position of the IS function' and 'strategy and innovation'. Part II - - Technology - - includes sections on 'information technology and financial services', 'software development practices', 'implementation and innovation' and ~user relations and IT integration'. Part III includes 'the dimensions of expertise', 'IT careers: organisational and occupational strategies', 'the economy of IS expertise' and 'conclusions'. Those interested in the management of IT will find something of interest in each section. For readers of this journal, Part I is particularly interesting but don't miss the last but one section on 'the economy of e x p e r t i s e ' . Here W i l l i a m s o n ' s theories of transaction economics are introduced and challenged. I suppose that for every economic theory about organization it is inevitable that there will be an OB riposte that says that the economist's view is over simplistic and doesn't allow for the ingenuity of mankind. In this instance, good use of the empirical material is made to attack Williamson's position. It will be interesting to see if the argument develops. It is the nature of careful research of this kind that no simple message appears in the conclusions. But the insights are many and significant. This book deserves to be not only bought but also read. Incidentally, two days after giving me the books, the managing director of the bank was fired by the American owners. -

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Professor Richard Ormerod Warwick Business School, UK

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