The ICT Influence on Strategic Thinking

A special issue of Information (ISSN 2078-2489). This special issue belongs to the section "Information and Communications Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 2954

Special Issue Editor

Department of Entrepreneurship and Management, Doctoral School of Entrepreneurship, Business Engineering & Management, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Interests: business strategy; strategic management; digital acceleration; technology entrepreneurship

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The last hundred years have seen scientific management mature quickly (at least from a historical point of view), going through a number of schools of management thinking that culminated with strategic management—a well-established school of thought including prominent scholars as Alfred Chandler Jr., Igor Ansoff, Peter Drucker, C.K. Prahalad, and Clayton Christensen, as well as Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, James Collins, Henry Mintzberg and Joseph Lampel, Charles Hill, Gareth Jones, Robert Kaplan, and David Norton, to name just a few. Same as a list of scholars could never be complete, conclusive, and critique-free, though, the management solutions, instruments, and tools developed by those sane scholars could not, either. While these tools and solutions have been proven to be useful and successful in a number of situations and under certain circumstances, they were unfortunately neither critique-free nor timelessly and universally valid.

Additionally, contemporary generations are currently witnessing a world of turbulent times and rapid changes. These turbulences have different origins (from social unrests and political conflicts to pandemics and economic crises to global warming), while the rapid changes are mostly the effects of the unprecedentedly rapid technological advances. Newer technologies in genetic engineering, newer materials, and newer technologies to produce energy are topped by an explosive development of computing power and information technology (IT) as well as IT-enabled communication technologies (ICT).

The ICT has the fastest pace of development and is producing amazing changes, with a sizeable impact on organizations’ strategies. Inherently, the current changes in strategic thinking are linked to ICT expansion.

To a certain extent, the current trends in strategic thinking seem to be contradictory, in terms of short-term versus longer-term approaches. However, giving up rigid strategic planning does not mean giving up the strategic way of thinking; on the contrary, it leaves room to two streams of strategic thinking. In both cases, flexibility and agility are key concepts, and the two approaches do not contradict each other.

On one side, because of the more rapid changes, higher turbulence, and uncertainty, the planning timeframe shortens (form five years plus to five years minus), and attention is paid to the increasingly competitive market (Blue Ocean strategy—Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne), marketing (Marketing as strategy—Nirmalya Kumar), and Strategic agility (John Kotter).

On the other side, special attention is paid to the longer-run prospections (up to decades): it is not about rigid planning but about exploring future paths and designing possible future scenarios. The key concept is foresight or futures studies (Denis Loveridge), such as corporate foresight (René Rohrbeck) and strategic foresight (Alfred Marcus, Andy Hines).

The novel ways of strategic thinking are definitely influenced by the process of ICT development and associated digital transformations. Digital transformations are currently impacting organizational structures entirely, decision making systems, and even human habits and behavior. Therefore, studies on these phenomena and processes as well as their implications—both theoretical and practical, for all stakeholders­—are challenging issues to be explored.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

  • ICT and current trends in strategic thinking;
  • Influence of mobile technologies on strategic thinking;
  • Getting competitive advantage by new and newer ICT (AI, AR, VR included);
  • E-collaboration technologies for obtaining a competitive advantage;
  • Influence of big data mining and analytics on strategic thinking; opinion mining, sentiment analysis, and emotion analysis;
  • ICT for business intelligence and strategic watch;
  • ICT-based early warning systems and methods for strategic changes and decisions;
  • Detection of weak signals for strategic changes and decisions;
  • ICT-supported strategic foresight and foresight strategies;
  • ICT influence on organization management, organizational structures, and decision making;
  • Aligning ICT and strategic goals;
  • ICT strategy versus ICT-based strategy;
  • Digital transformation and technology foresight;
  • Digital transformation and strategic changes;
  • Digital transformation and digital acceleration;
  • Design and implement digital transformation projects;
  • Managing conflicts and management conflicts during digital transformations;
  • Cultural and national prints in digital transformation;
  • Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on digital transformation;
  • Collaboration strategies in the digital era;
  • ICT and global strategic issues such as global warming, environment protection, green energy;
  • Case studies looking at interesting examples of strategic changes under the pressure of the current digital transformation.

Prof. Dr. Cezar Scarlat
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • information and communication technologies (ICT)
  • digital transformation
  • strategic thinking
  • strategic changes

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

11 pages, 1017 KiB  
Article
Digitalization and Strategic Changes in Romanian Retail Fuel Networks: A Qualitative Study
by Dan Andrei Panduru and Cezar Scarlat
Information 2022, 13(9), 416; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/info13090416 - 01 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2275
Abstract
The oil and gas industry is among the most affected industries as a result of war in Ukraine, on top of other economic, political, and environmental global turbulences that culminated with the coronavirus pandemic. The purpose of this qualitative, explorative study was to [...] Read more.
The oil and gas industry is among the most affected industries as a result of war in Ukraine, on top of other economic, political, and environmental global turbulences that culminated with the coronavirus pandemic. The purpose of this qualitative, explorative study was to identify strategic changes as well as the role played by newer technologies—digital technologies in particular—in this industry. The focus is on the Romanian oil and gas industry, more specifically on the retail fuel networks of the top companies. In addition to secondary research (literature and company documents), interview-based primary research was conducted. The data were collected during spring of 2022 by conducting interviews with two groups of subjects: the strategists—consisting of top managers from the largest companies active in the oil and gas industry in Romania; and the informed consumers—selected from people working in the oil and gas industry. The interview guides were slightly different depending on the two groups targeted, and the structure of the interview guide was developed according to research questions. Among the findings, we can observe that the fuel retail market and consumer behaviour changed due to a series of factors, such as the global economic crisis, COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and inflation. Those factors forced fuel retail companies, at the global level, to invest in filling station shops, services development, digitalization, and divestment—selling gas station networks in countries with poor integration with refineries. Romanian fuel retail companies are following the global trends and focusing on filling station shops, alternative fuels development, and digitalization. The results are followed by discussions, and several managerial implications are suggested. The study limitations and several further research paths are also identified. Based on the data available, we can conclude that the strategic directions at the level of products and services are aligned, but at the execution level, specialists offer different solutions for customer expectations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The ICT Influence on Strategic Thinking)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop