Yeung, Michelle

m.c.yeung@lse.ac.uk

The Role of Environmental Contexts in Shaping Information Systems Strategies in Retail Banks

In the light of the advancement in information technology, there is little disagreement about the strategic importance of IT. Broadbent and Weill noted that the financial services area is relatively mature in its information systems strategy development processes, and academic research in this area could provide further valuable insights. The retail banking sector, with its sheer size and competitive intensity, is the main focus of this thesis.

A starting point for the analysis of the process of strategy formation is the research carried out by Pettigrew of which he terms a contextualist analysis. Although contextualism recognises the importance of multilevel contexts, taking into account not only internal organisational context, but also external sectoral and national contexts, Pettigrew himself acknowledged that a conceptual link between the external environment contexts and the organisational context should be furthered examined and developed.

The thesis takes the interpretive sociology stance, and aims to examine how the external environment black box influences the actions of organisation members as social actors socially construct the meaning conveyed by the external environment. Callon's actor-network theory and his concept of the techno-economic network of human and non-human actors provides a useful way to further understand the complicated process of strategy. This concept could also be used loosely in this case as an analytic tool to illustrate how social actors interact during a strategy formation process.

The objective of this research is to extend Walsham and Waema's research framework on strategy formation by expanding the external environment context element and to provide a reasonably convincing analysis in the hope of spurring further development of more vigorous research into the relevant areas. This is illustrated by an in-depth case study carried out in Hong Kong, and some general implications are developed in areas such as business and information systems vision: the organisation's interpretation of constraints, threats and opportunities in the environment.

Supervisor: Steve Smithson, PhD

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