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The setting is a food manufacturing company that has stumbled in terms of its historic growth and profit achievements. In trying to recapture its momentum, the president has used information technology as one element in his program of transition. The case focuses on the strategic problem and setting, the use of information technology for organizational change, and the associated implementation problems.

Provides a thorough overview of the company's 1990 and 1991 reorganizations and the resulting demand for information technology in lower levels of the organization. Closes with a discussion of Frito-Lay's most recent information technology projects, Explorer and Navigator.

In January 1988, Colby Chandler, Kodak CEO, created the Corporate Information Systems (CIS) and appointed Katherine Hudson head. She at once became the first head of IT and first woman corporate vice president in the company. Throughout 1989, Hudson inaugurated a series of organizational initiatives that not only would dramatically change the IT function within Kodak, but would rock the industry. She outsourced data center operations, telecommunications services, and personal computer support to IBM, DEC, and Business Land, respectively. Case presents the complexities in managing information systems through partnerships.

Describes grassroots effort which culminated in Digital's winning a competitive bid for the outsourcing of Kodak's internal telecommunications business. Describes the "Telstar" project, from the initial identification of the business opportunity to the process of crafting a partnership contract. Discussion topics include obtaining managerial and peer support, mobilizing informal networks, building an ad hoc team, managing relationships across organizational boundaries, and planning the transition from project team to ongoing operations. As the case ends, a key player must be replaced and a decision must be made concerning which Digital group will manage the new business. Russ Gullotti, the Digital executive who has overseen this effort considers how to help the team achieve a successful contract negotiation and subsequent transition to operations. Should also prompt discussion about leadership under ambiguity and management of innovation.

Describes "Frantic Friday," the day the Digital-Kodak contract was scheduled to be signed. Designed to be handed out in class.

In 1989, Frito-Lay designed an information technology infrastructure to support time-based competition and organizational restructuring. The company planned to provide timely flexible information to all major decision makers at all levels. This case describes the information support architecture and its anticipated effects.

Gives the voting results for the Power Systems Division's Vax System upgrade project.

General Electric Canada used sociotechnical design techniques to restructure its financial, administrative, facilities, and information technology service from a decentralized, hierarchical organization to a centralized organization composed of self-managing, multi-skilled work teams. The case explores the role of information technology in supporting and enabling the intensive information sharing and communication required by the new organization design.

Because technology now develops faster than before, in the future managers will be able to choose the kind of organization they want. New structures, associated with adhocracies, networks, or "cluster organizations," will spring up around old ones. Information technology will enable cluster-type organizations to have the benefits of small scale and large scale simultaneously. Teams will accomplish most work, with leadership shared among members, and workers will be better trained, more autonomous, and more transient. Finally, expert systems will make decision making better understood, and computers will allow control to be exercised separately from reporting relationships.