It in Management

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF NICHOLAS CARR'S "IT DOESN'T MATTER"

STUDENT 1D: 07066996
Brief outline for this coursework

Nicholas Carr's article "IT doesn't matter" (2003) still continues to be controversial even though it was published five years ago.

Even now, it is still hard to find people who either agree or disagree with his views in their entirety. Most of his critics concur

with him to the extent that IT has become ubiquitous but think his article was faulty since it emphasised the possession of IT

rather than its utilisation and management.

This paper begins by reviewing Carr's article and summarising it. It goes on to examine the strengths and weakness of the article

and also documents the arguments of his critics, both those in support and against his article. The paper concludes by not

totally agreeing with Carr's generic statement that "IT doesn't matter" and articulates the areas of concurrence and divergence. It

is the view of this author that IT can still be a source of competitive advantage to an organisation if it is aligned with the

organisation's business strategy and the right management, staff and culture are in place to exploit and leverage on the IT assets.

Introduction

Carr's article can be summarised as follows.

o IT is now ubiquitous and essentially a commodity required for day-to-day running of businesses

o Due to this ubiquity, IT can no longer offer significant competitive advantages to organisations since it is readily

available to all

o Organisations should therefore reduce their investments in IT by being followers and not leaders

o Organisations should focus more on the vulnerabilities/risks of their IT investments.

Interestingly Carr is not the first person to question the impact and contribution of IT on the performance and bottom-line of

organisations. Indeed the Nobel Prize laureate Robert Solow (1987) also generated a lot of interest when he commented that

there...