Enabling Business Strategy
1. How does IT impact the mission of the World Bank?
Before we dive deeply into analyzing how IT influences the mission of the World Bank (WB), it is important to understand their missions as well as their core strategy and capabilities fostering these missions. We will first notice changes in the capabilities and business strategies before we see the final impacts; every reflection of these changes shines through the glass of IT-enabled business initiatives. Rarely in business cases, do we see top executives present such strong support for IT development due to heavy upfront investment, possible disruptive business operations, and uncertain return on its investment (Applegate 63). Nevertheless, with a business model that thrives over internationally geographical and cultural differences, it is impossible to succeed without a well-supported IT global network.
The WB’s simplified mission in three phrases: fight poverty with passion and professionalism, help people and environment with resources and shared knowledge, and forge partnerships in both public and private sectors. Part one of their mission, the WB has financed 240 projects in 92 countries as assistance to both low-income and developing countries in 2003 (McFarland and Delacey, 3). How the WB achieves this exemplifies their key capability, global IT networks since 1977. This single key capability made it possible for the WB to enforce its first business strategy of decentralizing staff and decision making to local offices in order to assist clients faster and more effectively.
This transformation opened the door for the WB to allow IT-enabled global network to push forward the second business strategy, creation of knowledge bank, to achieve the second part of their mission. The WB moved from a traditional hierarchical organization with regional groups based on geographical