Beyond Normal Competencies : Understanding Organisational Designs to Develop and Sustain IT - Related Capabilities

Information technology (IT) is an important resource in organisations. Organisations leverage their IT resources with their IT-related capabilities to achieve, and sustain their competitive position. However, IT resources are dynamic, and evolve continually. Furthermore, competitive pressures and turbulent economic conditions mean that organisations continually invest in these dynamic IT resources. These situations mean that organisations need to sustain their IT-related competencies to leverage opportunities offered by the new IT resources. Research about ways to develop new, and sustain existing, IT-related capabilities is limited. A possible reason for the lack of research in this area is the lack of validated measurement items of theoretical constructs necessary to investigate ways to create new, and sustain, existing, IT-related competencies and capabilities. In this study, we suggest an environment in which organisations could build new, and sustain their existing IT-related capabilities. We report on the resources and processes that establish this environment. We also report on the development of valid measures of the elements of this environment. Analysis of pilot test data revealed that the measurement items purport to measure what they intended to measure. This study’s outcome is useful in extending our understanding of IT-related competence development to secure sustainable IT-related business value from the IT resources.