Page 553 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-84 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

will require powerful, accurate, and timely analytical infrastructures supporting local/global decision
and conflict resolution mechanisms.
Noninvasive CMA infrastructures will center on the exploitation of analytical infrastructures (e.g.,
hub-and-spoke data warehousing infrastructure patterns) and collaborative systems (e.g., person-to-
person and person-to-system workflow tools provided in Lotus Notes and Exchange environments).
Despite its falling out of favor during the last few years, analysts believe noninvasive integration models
will regain standing among Fortune 2000 executives as experience exposes the gap between vision and
implementation of various CMA integration approaches.
In Figure 4.5.4, business perspectives are:

• Enterprise managed as a “holding” of individually strong organizations
• Central instances audit, control, and guide local entities
• Local independence is retained as long as targets are met (profit and loss, productivity,
growth, budgets)
• Corporate processes exist and are strong, but these are indirect and less invasive
Typical IT mandates are:
• Central IT steering groups
• Strong central architectural function
• Standards
• Design principles
• Solid reporting and analysis of cross-enterprise data
• Efficient analytical tools and infrastructure
• Corporate licensing and procurement

4.5.2.1.5 Laissez-Faire Governance Pattern
Very often, loosely coupled (e.g., holding company or auxiliary) organizations degenerate into anarchistic
or silo organizational models, where the critical supervisory, advisory, and control function of the central
organization fails to establish solid cross-organizational enterprise processes. In this case, a dysfunctional
loosely coupled organization falls into laissez-faire governance patterns (see Figure 4.5.5). Although lais-
sez-faire patterns have the advantage of encouraging local initiative (and therefore flexibility), weak central
coordination will fail to eliminate or control redundant investments, incoherent developments and poor
human and material resource use across the enterprise. Therefore, the laissez-faire pattern is the result of
business units having agreed to not cooperate, collaborate, or communicate with each other.
The line between the loosely coupled and the laissez-faire governance pattern can be easily crossed
in the absence of strong management or changing corporate cultures. Organizations that were once
efficient but are now challenged by decentralized management schemes are good examples of such a
transition. When business reviews were hailing these companies and their management in the 90s as
the epitome of modern, networked, flat, dynamic organizations, they were running effectively under
loosely coupled governance patterns. When central coordination and control weakened, their gover-
nance models fell into laissez-faire schemes. The question remains whether the way to manage a dys-
functional laissez-faire organization is by superimposing a hard management, centralizing governance
culture (e.g., Carly Fiorina’s remodeling of HP’s structure), or reinforcing governance while keeping a
strong measure of local optimization as prescribed in the loosely coupled governance model.
It is therefore critical that CIOs avoid the prevailing confusion between the highly decentralized,
but potentially efficient and viable, loosely coupled governance pattern and its dysfunctional degenera-
tion, the laissez-faire pattern. While both advocate a decentralized organization with local initiative
and relative autonomy, in the loosely coupled pattern, central governance is indirect and noninvasive,
but strong and effective. Clarity of metrics, reporting, and control structures enable properly governed
loosely coupled patterns.