Editorial IT strategies: beyond competitive advantage Robert D. Galliers Lucas Professor of Business Systems Engineering, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK During the 1980% we saw considerable energy being expended in the search for the Holy Grail of competitive advantage from information technology (IT). There were many academic papers published on the topic and consultants grew rich from their efforts to persuade companies to invest in strategic information systems. The topic itself rose to become one of the top two information systems management issues identified by IT directors and senior IT executives in the USA, and many organizations sought to replicate the success stories of American and United Airlines, Thomson Holidays, Frito-Lay, Otis Elevators, Mrs Field’s Cookies and all the other celebrated cases that have entered the information systems mythology. In the cold light of the 199Os, however, much of this mythology has begun to pale. Were the success stories as real as they were first reported? Where is the sustainable advantage from IT? And if the stories were indeed real, to what extent were they planned or merely serendipitous? This editorial reflects on some of the more recent evidence available and raises some key points for debate in this important aspect of information systems management. It attempts to answer the question: What comes after competitive advantage? in terms of the on-going development of the topic ‘IT strategy”. The brief and inglorious history of information systems strategy Have you ever considered why it is that the topic ‘information systems strategy’ has retained its pre-eminent position as one of the critical information systems management issues throughout the 1980s and into the 199Os? Other issues rise and fall in the ratings: competitive advantage from IT is one such issue, another is managing end-user computing. Information systems strategy stands out amongst all the rest in terms of its consistently high rating (Niederman et al., 1991), at least amongst US IT executives. Table 1 illustrates the point. A version of this editorial was prepared for the XII Conference of the South-east Asia Regional Computer Confederation, Hong Kong, 5-8 October 1993, Conference Proceedings 2, pp 105-109. * The term ‘IT strategy’ is used in the broad sense to incorporate the range of issues associated with strategy formation and implementation with respect to information systems. This includes what Earl (1989) terms information systems strategy (what is required), IT strategy (how this might be delivered) and information management strategy (organizational and policy considerations). It also includes an implementation change management strategy and on-going assessment and review, with a view to ensuring that (i) things are going according to plan and (ii) changes in the strategy take place in line with this assessment and with changing circumstances (cf. Galliers, 1991). 0963-8687/93/040283-09 0 1993 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd 283