ABSTRACT
Three critical elements This chapter is devoted to the three critical elements of the organizational context for IPs. Two main factors should, as shown in Figure 3.1 (p36), determine what kind of IPs the organization needs, and the appropriate content, medium and form for them (it does not always happen in practice!): 1 Its objectives – how the organization itself defines what it’s in business to achieve, what it views as most critical for its survival and success. 2 Its business processes – the way it works to achieve its objectives, how it does what it’s in business to do. The most productive way of looking at them is as ‘an interlocking series of activities devoted to creating outputs, instead of a set of functional departments within the bounds of which self-contained activities take place – the metaphor is a river, rather than a stack of boxes’ (Orna, 1999, p11).1
