Enterprise Architecture
Capturing IT Infrastructure
Flexibility:
A Study of Resource Characteristics and
their Measure
This is the abstract of a paper by NANCY BOGUCKI DUNCAN who is an Assistant
Professor in the Graduate School of Management at Kent State University. Her research
interests include the strategic value of information technology, creative IT resource
management, and outsourcing. She recently completed her Ph.D. in MIS at Texas A& M
University. Nancy can be contacted at NDUNCAN@KENTVM.KENT.EDU.
NOTE: This paper is due to be published in full in the Fall, 1995 issue of the Journal of Management
Information Systems.
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Abstract
Information technology (IT) infrastructure has been identified in recent years in some
businesses as having a critical impact on the firm’s ability to use IT competitively. Although a
flexible infrastructure is considered highly valuable under certain circumstances, it is difficult
to plan and to measure because there is no common, operational definition. This paper
addresses the problem at two levels. First, it presents and explores various efforts to define or
describe infrastructure flexibility in the literature. It identifies basic components of IT
infrastructure and previously proposed characteristics of flexibility. The discussion considers
concepts of IT resource management, including technological architecture,
alignment of planning, and human resource skills, all of which have also been linked to
definitions of infrastructure flexibility. Second, the paper explores how the concept of
infrastructure flexibility is viewed among IT executives. The characteristics of infrastructure
may vary with firm resources and industry characteristics such as information-intensity;
consequently, we may expect flexibility to be either developed or thwarted in a great number
of ways. An informal study of IT executives’ experience with and opinions of infrastructure
flexibility results in a view of the practical issues of infrastructure flexibility. Based on the
outcome of this study, a framework is presented for developing tools for future efforts to
evaluate infrastructure flexibility. Methods by which the framework may be used to develop
individualized infrastructure benchmarking tools are proposed.
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