Why Management Failed to Define IT

Introduction

The importance of IT has been repeatedly emphasized in many companies. However, for a long time, IT has been treated as a “specialized domain,” “left to the field,” or “a target for cost control,” making it difficult to say it has been clearly defined as a core management concept. This article organizes the question of why management failed to define IT, not from the perspective of individual failure cases or talent theory, but from the structural viewpoint of management decision-making.

Not Defining IT Was, In Itself, a Management Decision

The first point to confirm is that the fact IT has been handled ambiguously is not an “accidental oversight.” The very act of management not clearly defining IT was a management decision. Separating IT from business strategy, delegating it to specialists, and treating it as a management object rather than an investment target—all of these are attitudes that management has chosen, whether consciously or unconsciously.

There Was No Place for IT in the Management Decision-Making Model

Traditional management decision-making models have been constructed around domains such as market and competitive environment, products/services, people/organization, and finance/investment. Within this framework, IT tended to be placed in the later stages as a “tool to support them.” In other words, IT was not originally designed into the model as an object for management to directly optimize.

The Rationality of Treating IT as “Something Management Doesn’t Understand”

There was also a certain rationality behind management’s failure to define IT. The technology changes rapidly, making the future difficult to predict; it requires high expertise with significant understanding costs; and the return on investment (ROI) is difficult to measure in the short term. Consequently, IT was pushed outside the realm of management decision-making as “something incomprehensible” or “better left to others.” As a result, IT became an area designed on the premise that “management would not be involved.”

Delegation and Abandonment Became Synonymous Over Time

In the IT domain, the decision to “leave it to the experts” has been repeated. Originally, delegation should be a relationship where “management defines the purpose and delegates the means to the experts.” However, in IT, the definition of purpose, setting of success conditions, and even accountability for failure were delegated, resulting in the disappearance of management involvement.

The Result of Unchecked Expansion Without Definition: Inability to Integrate As time passed without IT being defined, it fragmented according to its uses. IT for accelerating business, IT for stabilizing operations, IT for management and control. Each developed rationally, but lacking a common objective function (management goal), they were never integrated. This is not a problem that can be solved later by adjusting tools or organizations. The Real Reason IT Never Became a Management Issue

IT had characteristics that made it difficult for management to address directly: it did not directly generate revenue, its results were not immediately visible, and accountability for failure tended to be ambiguous. Therefore, IT was consistently treated as an “issue that could be postponed” and was never squarely defined as a management challenge.

The Consequences

As a result of management not defining IT, the following conditions became normalized:

• IT objectives differ by department
• No criteria exist for investment decisions
• Failures are not structurally examined
• Ad-hoc, person-dependent responses are rewarded

These are not problems of the field or individuals. They are the inevitable consequences of management’s failure to define.

The Next Question to Ask

The question, “Why did management fail to define IT?” is not meant to blame the past. What is important is to clarify what remains undefined today and to what extent management should take ownership. The next chapter will address how the objective function of IT fragmented as a result of management’s failure to define it.