Computers and managerial choice

Since information technology (IT) is too broad a field for anyone to master, managers need policies based on a broad understanding of options and impacts to drive plans for IT. This understanding requires a more sophisticated sense of technology and computer fluency, the latter of which addresses 2 factors that will substantially determine large organizations' future health: 1. economic costs and benefits, and 2. organizational and individual costs. Physical technologies can have widely varying impacts depending on the implicit abstract dimensions, which include: 1. time, 2. software, 3. interdependence with other components, 4. interdependence with organizational change and learning, and 5. required new applications skills. Organizational change is too important to leave to technical specialists, but technical factors will drive decision making if managers are not fluent about IT. Delegation is no longer a practical strategy because the choices made determine the firm's future health.