Capturing Corporate Philosophy: The Future of IT

Abstract

Context is proposed as a mechanism for organizing Information Technology practices in the future through its role in interpretation. An enterprise organization model based on decision-flow is presented here that is applicable to a variety of domains. It contains elements that mark the information content with respect to a full consideration of its environment. These elements are, in order of increasing superiority, data, information, knowledge, judgement, and philosophy. There are four marked stages where contextual derivation occurs among these elements, including definition, refinement, improvement, and realization. Discovery occurs during the derivation of context and it is at this time that higher-level processes influence subordinate processes. For this reason, it is believed that corporate philosophy can be infused explicitly throughout enterprise practices. The resulting organizational model can be used by an enterprise to strategically allocate resources and maintain competitive advantage.