Josh Morton

University of Leeds · Leeds University Business School

While much literature on strategic agility has focused on strategic flexibility and adaption at organizational levels, there is a need to provide specific guidance at lower, more discrete levels of analysis. This article focuses on the context of a particular professional group, executive information technology (IT) leaders, who have received atten...

Recent years have seen heightened interest in how information technologies (IT) are changing the nature of work in strategy and in the work of strategists. This paper highlights four ‘modes of open strategizing’ which represent the digital work activities of strategists, who in our case are top managers involved in developing and implementing a new...

This paper provides an assessing review and agenda for research at the ‘nexus’ between information systems and strategy practice. The review aims to understand the nature of this connection between the two areas, where information systems scholars strive to understand the everyday work of practitioners in organisations and the impact of digital tec...

Although agility is often associated with rapid speed and flexibility, having processes for “deep reflection” is also crucial. This includes the need for collective dialogs across and outside organizations to build greater awareness of, and attention to, strategic issues. How do managers involve a wider range of stakeholder voices in strategy as th...

There is a promising body of work pertaining to the strategic value of IT-enabled self-organised collectives in times of crisis. This area is of significant theoretical and practical importance. Yet, we still have little systematic knowledge about precisely how self-organised collectives contribute during crises and how the value of their contribut...

Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise...

Digital transformation drives sustained business value through the use of digital technology.However, there is often confusion regarding what steps organisations should follow to achieve digital transformation, including to benefit innovation processes. In this study, we outline seven steps in a conceptual model – the digital transformation loop –...

Despite recent attention in information systems and strategy research considering inclusiveness, transparency, and use of IT tools in strategy formulation (also known as open strategy), the effectiveness of these principles has not been empirically studied in the literature. This research gap is even more prominent when we consider distinct positiv...

This study explores the different motivations and learning styles of students using a game for revision in a leading university. The research is unique in attempted to understand the coaction of motivation and learning style through rich qualitative empirical work, which unpacks the opinion of game users and their inherent real-life experience of e...

This study explores the different motivations and learning styles of students using a game for revision in a leading university. The research is unique in attempted to understand the coaction of motivation and learning style through rich qualitative empirical work, which unpacks the opinion of game users and their inherent real-life experience of e...

In this short paper we reconsider information technology (IT)-business alignment and explore the aligning of activities at the micro-level in a pluralistic healthcare context. This research-in-progress is based on the limited number of interviews undertaken thus far. More specifically, we investigate aligning in the activities associated with a per...

Open strategy is an emerging phenomenon, and has received significant interest by researchers in both information systems (IS) and strategy fields. The term open strategy represents how strategy-making is becoming a more inclusive and transparent process in organizations, often enabled by information technology (IT). Despite the notable attention p...

Extant literature associates a central purpose of open strategizing with organizations seeking to manage legitimacy. To date, legitimacy has been highlighted as a potential ‘effect’ or ‘outcome’ of strategic openness. Absent has been research attempting to understand open strategy as a process of legitimation, and there remains a need to elevate th...

Extant literature associates the central purpose of open strategizing with organizations seeking to manage legitimacy (e.g. Chesbrough & Appleyard, 2007; Whittington, Cailluet & Yakis- Douglas, 2011; Dobusch, Dobusch & Muller-Seitz, 2017). To date, legitimacy has been highlighted as a potential ‘effect’ (Gegenhuber & Dobusch, 2017) or ‘outcome’ (Lu...

This paper examines the different roles external facilitators have in information technology driven open strategizing. Using a strategy-as-practice lens and drawing on two empirical cases of open strategy in organizations, our paper highlights four emerging roles of external facilitators which we call; structuring, promoting, moderating and analyzi...

The concept of openness has become widespread in organizations, driven by the advent of the internet and advances in information technology, with open approaches now a particular interest to information systems researchers. Open principles have more recently been adopted by organizations in a strategic context, through openness in strategy processe...

Information systems are an important organizational asset and offer numerous benefits. However, organizations face continued challenges when upgrading ageing information systems, and the data contained within, to newer platforms. This article explores, through conversations with information systems professionals in four organizations, the potential...

Jamming is a term which is increasingly common in case studies and literature, both academic and non-academic, especially where topics such as social technology, collaboration and innovation are a predominant focus. An IBM expression which represents their use of social technologies to connect actors to collaborate in an ‘online conference’ environ...

Open strategy research arises from increasing interest in the phenomenon of openness in strategy research and practice, and how this presents a radical change from established theories of organisational strategy. In light of these developments, this conceptual paper demonstrates how web based collaborative tools are being utilised to enable collabo...

The riots that occurred in London, and throughout other parts of the UK in the summer of 2011 put the spotlight on social media, especially by those who argued it was used as a tool for inciting much of the social disorder. UK members of parliament (MPs) expressed that in future emergencies social media should be shut down, whilst the heads of accu...