Leadership at organisations and institutions no longer redirect or channel their interactions with information technology as they did in the past. Needless to say, leadership, as has been known to mankind, has existed for several ages. Over the centuries and decades, theories about leadership and leadership styles have emerged. Regardless of a leader’s leading style, leadership has maintained the exigency of leadership and followership with the basic tenet that a leader possesses or possessed the vision and wisdom to lead the followers. This is particularly critical for the main purpose that organisations and institutions need leaders who will lead and navigate them through the ever-growing technological age and to lessen the digital divide. This chapter exposes readers to how leadership at institutions and organisations has embraced information technology. In this chapter, readers are driven through the rather unforgettable journey of digital age, popularised by enterprise electronic commerce. The transition from the traditional ways of business to the integration of IT and enterprise eCommerce was galvanised by the objective to improve business practices. Now, this has also meant that organisations and institutions restructure their establishments. Sections and subtopics tackled in this chapter include:
The Motivation: This chapter takes a review of information technology and its role in organisations and institutions alike. The chapter delves further into how information technology enhances organisational leadership vis-à-vis strategic decision-making process. Needless to say that information technology and its infrastructure form the bedrock of enterprise electronic commerce. Enterprise electronic commerce will be tackled in detail in the following chapter.
The Transcendence of Information Technology: Leadership and management at organisations and institutions have come to realise that the integration of information technology into their day-to-day business operations goes well beyond enhancing administrative support. In this section, the transcendence of information technology throughout organisations and institutions and their leadership is tackled.
The Assimilation of Information Technology into the Organisational Fabric: This modern era has called for organisations and institutions to tap into and assimilate information technology into their strategic missions. Organisations and institutions that have ignored this information technology rash or assimilations are left uncompetitive.
The Leadership Team and Information Technology-The Assimilation: The galvanisation process of the project is visited in this section. There is the contention that effective information technology and information systems leaders have strategic vision thereby devising organisational arrangements such as structures, process, and staffing in efforts to address challenges and the interdependencies. The need to reconnoitre the impact of enterprise electronic commerce on leadership at institutions and organisations is presented.
Summary: The summary section encapsulates the chapter.
Key TermsandDefinitions: Some of the key words together with their definitions are presented under this section.