Despite the noted potential of information technology (IT) for enhancing organizational effectiveness (Boynton and Victor 1991; Venkatraman 1991), few fm-ns seem to have achieved consistent success in deploying IT in ways that fundamentally alter industry practices or existing work processes associated with value chain activities and customer interactions (McKenney 1995). Prior IS research has focused attention on the impacts and organizational drivers associated with strategic applications of IT (Sabherwal and King 1995). The main objective of such applications is the seizing of competitive advantage in the marketplace. The focus of this researchisuponapplicationsoflTthatarebroaderinorganizationalscope: whiletheirultimategoalmightbetheattainmentofmarket advantages, their immediate focus might be on the enhancement of business competence with respect to managerial decision-making, customer service, manufacturing management, or launching of a variety of value-added products and services. In order to distinguish such strategic applications of IT, we term them as visionary applications of IT. We consider them to be different from strategic applicationsoflTintworespects: (i)whilevisionaryapplicationsareaimedattheaugmentationofbusinesscompetencies,strategic applications are often targeted on exploiting market or competitive advantage opportunities and (ii) visionary applications are usually driven by the visionary insight of a senior business executive and exhibit an enterprise-wide flavor in their implementation scope, whereas strategic applications often arise in business units and are restricted to a specific market or business in their implementation scope
