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The COVID-19 pandemic has evolved into a multi-faceted global crisis with massive challenges for any organization around the world. With lockdowns and other social distancing protocols implemented in countries worldwide, economic activities and social interactions become increasingly reliant on technology. This study aimed to examine the intervention role of business-IT alignment on the influence of IT governance (ITG) and IT application orchestration capability (IT-AOC) on organization performances. The educational sector was chosen as an object of study as this sector will experience a decade of radical technology-driven change due to COVID-19's stimulus and there were limited IT-AOC studies that used this sector as a research object. This study use a survey method and purposive sampling with a total classified sample of 55 higher education institutions (HEIs) and 110 respondents involved represent the samples. Data analysis was conducted using a Variance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (VB-SEM) approach of Partial Least Square (PLS) technique. The results suggest that both ITG and IT-AOC have a positive effect on organization performances. Moreover, this study proved that business-IT alignment can intervene the influence of ITG and IT-AOC on organization performances.

PurposeAdvanced Electronic Medical Records (EMR) provide many potential benefits to hospitals. However, because of their broad scope, many stakeholders deal with the EMR and a continuous effort has to be made to keep up with internal and external change. Therefore, hospitals need to deliberately shape their organizational competencies considering the pursuit of alignment, i.e. making sure that the EMR remains optimally aligned with strategies, goals and needs of the hospital and its stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate the evolutionary paths of these alignment competencies and their drivers, from a theoretical perspective of co-evolutionary information systems alignment (COISA).Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on a longitudinal multiple case study of three Dutch hospitals which each recently implemented an advanced EMR system. The authors conducted 35 in-depth interviews in 2 phases (before and after go-live of the EMR), and studied documentation related to the EMR implementations.FindingsThe findings show that each hospital's COISA capability shows a different evolutionary path. However, two of the three case hospitals ended up coordinating part of their COISA capability to an ecosystem level, i.e. they incorporated other hospitals using the same EMR system to coordinate their alignment efforts, either from an operational perspective, or in terms of orchestration and strategy. The found evolutionary paths' key drivers include “stakeholder initiative”, “accumulating experience”, “driving events” and “emerging issues”.Originality/valueThe findings help healthcare practitioners to deliberately shape their organization's COISA capability in pursuit of EMR alignment. Furthermore, the authors add to the knowledge base on co-evolutionary approaches to alignment through the longitudinal approach.

Although the concept of business-IT alignment was once considered one of the most important concerns of organizations, in terms of IT administration, the attention it has received has decreased significantly over the years. This article postulates that strategic alignment initiatives still have the same relevance—in particular for non-IT companies—which means that digital transformation strategies should consider the strategic alignment as a critical issue for their success. Therefore, the persistent relevance of this concept and the need to measure it with updated instruments capable of assessing the degree of maturity reached and feeding back the results to the organizations remains a key topic in IT administration. Based on an updated instrument, adequate for a digital framework, our study surveyed a sample of mostly large Chilean companies. The results obtained reveal the importance to count with an improved model that captures the changes this new digital scenario imposes.

ContextTo improve operational business-IT alignment (BITA), the development of IT-based systems should be derived from business requirements. However, the requirements elicitation process is challenging and encounters several problems which might lead to acquiring low-quality user requirements and failure of systems development projects. Many of elicitation problems are also identified as being relevant in the BITA literature. We focus on one category of well-known elicitation problems, such as communication flaws.Until now, the majority of requirements elicitation studies with the aim of addressing operational BITA are based on an asking strategy. This elicitation strategy is suitable for relatively stable situations. To compensate for the limitation of this strategy in a more complex situation, e.g., a co-creation value network (VN) setting, using it in conjunction with other elicitation strategies is more likely to yield satisfactory results.ObjectiveTo contribute to operational BITA improvement in a VN setting by addressing one category of elicitation problems. For this purpose, we design and evaluate a reference model-based approach to facilitate the user requirements elicitation process.MethodTwo-phase research according to the design science approach is followed. In the design phase, a reference model-based user requirements elicitation process is designed. Also, as a proof of concept, two instances of this artifact are designed. Two reference models, respectively, describing customer knowledge management processes and customer knowledge management challenges in a VN setting are used separately in designing these two instances. In the evaluation phase, the applicability and usefulness of these instances are evaluated in two separate studies.ResultsA reference model supports asking-based user requirements elicitation process via a Delphi method in a complex context of a VN. It improves the user requirements elicitation process by addressing a set of recognized elicitation problems.ConclusionsThe reference model-based approach, by addressing the elicitation problems, contributes to user requirements elicitation process improvement in general and to a better operational BITA in the complex situation of a VN in particular

In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Architecture (EA) research. Specifically, scholars tend to focus on EA-based capabilities that organize and deploy organization-specific resources to align strategic objectives with the technology&rsquo, s particular use. Despite the growth in EA studies, substantial gaps remain in the literature. The most substantial gaps are that the conceptualization of EA-based capabilities still lacks a firm base in theory and that there is limited empirical evidence on how EA-based capabilities drive business transformation and deliver benefits to the firm. Therefore, this study focuses on EA-based capabilities, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical foundation, and develops and tests a new research model that explains how dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities lead to organizational benefits. The research model&rsquo, s hypotheses are tested using a dataset that contains responses from 299 CIO&rsquo, s, IT managers, and lead architects. Based on this study&rsquo, s outcomes, we contend that dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities positively enhance firms&rsquo, process innovation and business&ndash, IT alignment. These mediating forces are both positively associated with organizational benefits. The firms&rsquo, EA resources and specifically EA deployment practices are essential in cultivating dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities. This study advances our understanding of how to efficaciously de-lineate dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities in delivering benefits to the organization.

Nowadays, business IT alignment must remain absolutely scalable over time, be more effective and prepare to be agile to deal with environmental changes. These changes have an impact on the factors leading to a harmonic relationship between strategy and information technology (IT). However, business IT alignment is not easy to achieve and maintain. Therefore, it is essential to know the scope of the impact in the complete adaptation of alignment by making the relationships of the alignment elements ready to treat change as a critical discipline by choosing to make them fluid and agile. Over the literature, the research on the factor of change and strategic alignment to make a system agile and aligned is not overly developed. This lack has led us to propose a meta-model that formalizes change to make strategic alignment fluid and more agile by determining agility between abstraction levels including the relationship of business IT alignment domains.

Contradictory views exist regarding whether business–information technology (IT) alignment enhances or reduces organizational agility, and no consensus has been achieved. To disentangle this puzzle, this study takes both the intellectual and social dimensions of IT alignment into account and investigates how they influence agility in opposite directions through distinct mechanisms. Based on survey data from 429 dyads of business and IT executives, we uncover that intellectual alignment impedes agility by increasing organizational inertia, while social alignment facilitates agility by enhancing emergent business–IT coordination. We also find that social alignment weakens the effect of intellectual alignment on organizational inertia. This paper fills a gap in the information systems (IS) literature by providing a theory-driven explanation of the alignment paradox, which makes a significant contribution to both IS research and practice. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0711 .

For the last four decades, the alignment of business and IT strategies also referred to as business-IT alignment (BITA), has been recognised as one of the top concerns for leaders. The current digital transformation journey undertaken by most organisations, however, triggered a new approach to planning and executing business and IT strategies as well as pursuing BITA. A systematic literature review is conducted to capture the paradigmatic shift in research and practice. A total of 94 articles published between 2014 and 2018 were identified searching through databases known to index reputable IS journals and conference proceedings. The analysis of the review revealed the continued conceptual debate on BITA construct as well as new research topics. The significance of digital strategy, enterprise architecture models, as well as intelligent IT systems to enable elicitation, implementation and assessment of activities enabling BITA are garnering the attention of researchers. Potential research directions are presented.

An Enterprise Architecture (EA) represents the fundamental organization of the business process and Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, serving to capture the essentials of business, IT and its evolution, being relevant to protecting the business and maintaining the flexibility and adaptability of the organization. In the context of the enterprise architecture modeling, some problems were identified: (i) the lack of traceability of the elements present in the computational models or the visualization, in an understandable way, of the chain of elements that are related; and (ii) the absence of synchronization between the computational models of the strategic (strategic model), tactical (business process model) and operational IT levels, focusing on information systems (system requirements model). Among the negative impacts related to these problems are, for example, the obsolescence of models, the difficulty of carrying out impact analysis and decision making, in scenarios of organizational changes. Thus, in order to provide a reduction or elimination of the negative impacts caused by these problems, an approach is proposed to promote the traceability and synchronization of the computational models of an AE. The approach proposed in this work is composed of three layers that together provide: (i) a set of meta-models, representing the strategic, tactical and operational levels of the EA; (ii) a model traceability structure that supports change and configuration management through the use of COBIT, ITIL and ISO 20.000 recommendations and good practices; and (iii) a model synchronization structure that uses the techniques of model driven development (DDM) and allows automated (or semi) automated support to synchronize between the models produced. The purpose of this approach is to keep the computer models traceable and up-to-date, allowing: (i) the support for visualization and understanding of how a set of models (strategic, tactical and operational IT) and their elements relate; (ii) the support for impact analysis and decision-making in change scenarios; (iii) the necessary support to avoid the obsolescence of the models; and (iv) the creation and maintenance of the strategic alignment of the business with IT.

This paper offers a novel view on the business-IT alignment that takes on the three major challenges of prior research: theory, process and applicability. The theoretical deliberations and empirical data of a single in-depth case study shows that taking an activity theoretical lens offers a way to conceptualize the mechanisms, triggers and complexities of business-IT alignment that enhance our understanding of the alignment process and reveal important implications for practice. Building on activity theory and the notion of interrelated activity systems, the authors propose to view business and IT as two distinct, yet related activity systems that co-evolve over time. Moreover, they show that business-IT alignment can be understood as a process of continuous adjustments between the two collective, pragmatic, contested and situated activity systems of business and IT. Examining data spanning six years of transformation processes, the authors systematically increase their understanding of the processes and underlying mechanisms of aligning business and IT. These insights are facilitated via the conceptualization of the alignment as a process aimed to reduce contradictions and tensions within and between the linked activity systems of business and IT. The theoretical deliberations and empirical evidence show that AT provides a strong theoretical foundation and a robust framework that is able to facilitate rigorous process-oriented studies, whose findings can guide endeavors of detecting and approaching misalignments in practice.

Business-IT alignment continues to remain a top management concern. Regardless of ample research, achieving and sustaining business-IT alignment remains challenging to organization's management. To this day, the influence of organizational politics remains unstudied in the light of business-IT alignment. By performing a case study in a large organization in Sweden, the authors present and discuss how organizational politics influences business-IT alignment from the viewpoint of practitioners. They find that organizational politics has a negative influence on communications, partnering, IT governance, IT scope, and business and IT skills of the Strategic Alignment Maturity model. Furthermore, the authors identified several root causes for organizational politics in the business-IT alignment context, not addressed by the commonly used business-IT alignment constructs. The findings of this research study are useful to business and IT practitioners for achieving and sustaining business-IT alignment in their organizations considering the influence of organizational politics.

From an information systems perspective, organizations striving to leverage a strategic alignment between Information Technology (IT) and business areas often underestimate the role of human resource management in creating business value. This literature review analyzes 71 scholarly articles to assess the role of human resource management in supporting the strategic alignment between business and IT. We identify the organizational role of individual human resources in strategic alignment, their contribution to more effective strategic alignment, and how human resource management supports such contribution. Based on these insights, we formulate propositions and identify avenues for future research.

Stratgic alignment has been one of the top concerns for IT executives for decades. One of the great debates in literature regarding strategic alignment is what act ‘alignment’ means, why it is needed and how do enterprises stay aligned. Alignment has many definitions, but in this context, it is concerned with the integration of business and IT strategies. Research has proven that there are positive relations to enterprise performance when it is aligned. This qualitative research investigates the causes of misalignment through the views and thoughts of IT professionals at a Scandinavian IT consultancy company. By using a model created by, Schlosser, Wagner, and Coltman, this thesis could establish the most common factors to achieve alignment in the given enterprise. The model allowed the field of business-IT alignment to be explored in IT projects, and allowed for a better understanding of what causes misalignment. This thesis conducted six interviews to answers two research questions; (1) what factors cause misalignment in IT projects and (2) how do these factors differ in different methodologies. The results from the analysis found that the main factors of misalignment were ‘procedures / workflow alignment’, ‘managerial skills of business and IT employees’, ‘technical skills and knowledge of IT employees’, ‘mutual trust and respect between business and IT executives / employees’, ‘IT skills and knowledge of business executives/employees’ and ‘alignment of business and IT strategy/goals/plans’. The second research question could concluded that more research is needed to understand how factors change using different methodologies, as the results were to similar to reach a definit conclusion. For future research the thesis recommends using a multiple case study using the same model to verify the data gathered in this thesis and to strengthen the use of the model.

A framework for supporting managers in selecting BITA models is proposed.The framework is based on 25 criteria classified in four different groups.The framework is evaluated in different academic and empirical iterations.The framework scientifically contributes to BITA theories and its practices.The framework as a collaborative learning tool in organizations and academia. Researchers and practitioners have argued on the importance of business-IT alignment (BITA) for organizations to maximize the business value of IT. As a result, a vast number of BITA models have been designed to support organizations in achieving, assessing and maintaining BITA. These models focus on different components (i.e. concepts/aspects of alignment) and emphasize different perspectives of the alignment (i.e. how alignment is perceived by practitioners). This makes it difficult for practitioners to choose an appropriate BITA model for a specific organization. In this paper, an evaluation framework to support practitioners in choosing appropriate BITA models is proposed. The framework was constructed following design science as a research approach. The design science activities were carried out in an iterative manner until reaching a final artefact. The process started with an extensive literature survey that led to designing a tentative model. Following that, different empirical iterations contributed to the framework development. The final framework consists of 25 criteria categorized into four groups. It was tested on six major BITA models, demonstrating its feasibility. Finally, the framework was evaluated by interviewing five business consultants and seven IT managers from large Swedish organizations. The evaluation shows that the framework has a complete set of criteria with a sufficient level of coherence, but its usability and efficiency is argued differently. The framework, additionally, is argued to potentially be used as a collaborative learning tool on requirement of BITA between practitioners from both business and IT domain or serve in the academic world.

19 unique social barriers have been identified in a large Swedish company.Limited knowledge sharing leads to poor communication and low understanding.Failed IT projects results in lower credibility and reliability in IT department.Lack of openness and trust hinders cross-departmental communication.Weak relationship between business and IT diminishes mutual commitment and support. There are still many organizations that face difficulties in achieving business/IT alignment. Prior research has focused on the positive impact of alignment on overall business performance, while the barriers in achieving business/IT alignment were largely unexplored, especially in regards to the social dimension that refers to the people involved in alignment. Therefore this research is focusing on identifying and investigating the barriers that inhibit achieving social dimension of business/IT alignment in large organizations. A case study is conducted in one of the largest Swedish companies. The data is collected through seven semi-structured interviews, field-notes and the use of company's documents that were thematically analyzed. The research presents a unique case of 19 business/IT alignment barriers of social dimension that have been limited so far and which contribute to the business/IT alignment field. The main findings showed that low understanding of counterpart's environment; poor communication; unclear specifications; limited cooperation and lack of mutual commitment and support inhibits the achievement of alignment between business and IT domains on the social dimension. The results could support the researchers to further elaborate frameworks on how to mitigate social barriers in order to achieve a better business/IT alignment. Besides, the discussed barriers can be of practical use for other organizations trying to achieve business/IT alignment with a focus on the social dimension.

How can firms improve the degree of social alignment between their business and IT units? Many years of research have shown the importance of business-IT alignment and its various facets, yet research on the efficacy of IT governance mechanisms to improve business-IT alignment is scarce. In this paper, we develop a model of social alignment at the operational level that considers the degree of social capital between an organization's business and IT units, IT personnel's business understanding, and a set of formal and informal IT governance mechanisms that drive the creation of social alignment and business value. Using survey data from 132 US banks, we show that social alignment is driven to varying degrees by a broad variety of IT governance mechanisms ranging from top management support and IT representation on the executive board to joint IT planning and IS training, regular meeting cycles, and liaison units. Our research contributes substantially to the practical demand on business-IT alignment research for an effective toolkit of IT governance mechanisms.

Strategic alignment must remain active in the long term and dynamic with unforeseen changes. This is how agility at this level requires a projection into the future which must be instrumented by formal techniques as rational anticipation. It is important to find the right balance between the agile part, which is necessary for the rapid and appropriate transformation of the information system and strategic alignment, which ensures the coherence, durability, and relevance of an information system. By contrast, it should be obvious that the key to evolution in an approach between strategic alignment and agility is the dynamism of the process. Following an improvement in the state of the art, our article proposes a process that will be a good balance for a harmonized system that is agile enough to be able to maintain a strategic alignment with frequent evolutions.

In a context of users increasingly demanding for the use of technology, organizations are continually challenged to present new strategies to improve their business activities. This forces them to be aligned on frameworks and models that help to adequately relate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources to the external and internal activities of the organization. The application of the Framework Control OBjectives for IT (COBIT) and the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) allow synchronization between the good use of ICT resources and business objectives. This paper aims to present a conceptual framework through the appropriate use of the governance and management processes of COBIT and the different perspectives that offer the adjustments between the domains of the SAM model to reach an adequate strategic alignment between the business and ICT. The conceptual method used allows to establish qualities and characteristics of SAM and COBIT in order to align them between the organization and ICT. The results obtained translate into a conceptual framework to be applied in different thematic areas of technology.

Business-IT alignment (BITA) is expected to become a key role in a company's success in the modern era. Involvement of national, regional, and organizational culture in BITA has attracted many researchers recently since culture is a part of business process. The purpose of this paper is to study the involvement of Organizational Culture (OC) in BITA for a government institution in a developing country. This research is based on BITA-OC Integrated View (BITA-OCIV) developed by El-Mekawy et.al. which analyzed the most influencing criteria in BITA. BITA-OCIV is based on Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) developed by Luftman (for describing the level of maturity of BITA) and Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) developed by Cameron & Quinn (to classify the type of culture). The extent of BITA-OCIV at attributes level will be discussed. Several Luftman's SAM's attributes which are potential influence for each organization culture type are evaluated in order to find which attributes will contribute significantly in increasing an organization performance. We found that the criteria and attributes SAMM are influenced by the types of organizational culture. This preliminary research indicates that this type of organization (private or government or others) and the location of the organization (developed countries or developing countries or other) will obtain different results.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A's) are increasingly popular in the last few decades. Research indicates about 60% of these mergers do not create value for shareholders. Research confirms that IT-Business alignment is one of the key drivers of business value creation. This conviction is seen in the M&A literature as well. The broad research interest of the thesis is to understand the influence of pre-integration process level IT-business alignment on the post-integration IT-business value. We build on the conception that the first order effect of IT-Business alignment occurs at the process level. In this thesis, we reason that the degree of IT-business alignment of the processes that are getting integrated influences the post-integration process level IT -business alignment and thereby impacting the IT-business value.

Despite significant research progress, alignment-related issues are among the top concerns of executives. Previous studies mostly focus on a company-wide strategic level of alignment; while this `top-down¿ view has benefits, it largely ignores the operational practices that help achieve alignment in IT projects as well as the impact that timing and complementarity of practices have on achieving alignment. In our research we apply four alignment practices ¿ communication, shared understanding, management commitment and IT investment evaluation ¿ to individual IT projects rather than at a company level; specifically, we look at the role of timing and complementarity for these alignment practices throughout different project phases. A detailed analysis of six IT projects carried out at three companies in the telecommunications industry reveals that IT projects creating higher business value employ all four alignment practices immediately from the start. No project was able to recover from failing to establish these four alignment practices in the first phase. While supporting the importance of complementarity of alignment practices, our findings also add the importance of the earliness of this complementarity.

It is widely acknowledged that information technology (IT) and business resources need to be well aligned to achieve organizational goals. Yet, year after year, chief information officers still name business-IT alignment a key challenge for IT executives. While alignment research has matured, we still lack a sound theoretical foundation for alignment. Transcending the predominantly strategic executive-level focus, we develop a model of "operational alignment" and IT business value that combines a social perspective of IT and business linkage with a view of interaction between business and IT at nonstrategic levels, such as in daily business operations involving regular staff. Drawing on social capital theory to explain how alignment affects organizational performance, we examine why common suggestions such as "communicate more" are insufficient to strengthen alignment and disclose how social capital between IT and business units drives alignment and ultimately IT business value. Empirical data from 136 fi...

This exploratory positivist case study uses multiple case design to examine the impacts of strategic alignment during the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process and the implications for strategic formulation of successful M&A outcomes. According to alignment theory, for a firm to achieve M&A integration success, the business-IS strategies should be aligned during the M&A execution. However, our results indicate that successful, non-aligned M&A integrations can also occur, strongly supporting the emergent perspective of strategy formation in M&A integration as a valuable addition to the a priori formal planning view of strategy formation.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of Business-Information Technology Alignment, or BIA, on organizations and to revisit the BIA antecedents by using data from hotel sector of the service industry. The research model was developed based on the literature and inputs from the hotel industry and IT experts, using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique in data analysis, and data from phone interviews that were conducted with both business and IT personnel from 3 to 5 star hotels in Thailand. We found that Business-IT Alignment does have a positive relationship with organizational performance. Shared domain knowledge was found to have the highest relationship with Business-IT Alignment while IT management sophistication had the least impact, but in a negative direction, while organizational size was found to be a moderator. Other BIA antecedents were effective communication, IT operational and implementation success, and planning sophistication. This study developed a model that integrates the alignment between the strategic and operational levels which offers a holistic view of BIA, different from previous studies that considered only one or the other level. Secondly, we cross verify the antecedents from the literature and actual practice by interviewing experts in the industry. Finally, we revisited measurements and relationships among the constructs so that the model is up-to-date and applicable to the current business environment.

The purpose of this research is to understand and quantify the direct and indirect effects of partnership and building human resources on business-IT alignment. The research identified about seven to eight empirical studies that described the interaction between the factors considered in this study and business-IT alignment. A theoretical framework is proposed regarding the constructs of partnership, human resources and business-IT alignment (BIA). The sample data from sixty-five firms were obtained through structured questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to understand the strength of relationships among the three constructs and estimate the probability associated with the indirect effects using bootstrap technique. The results showed that building human resources and developing partnership between business and IT groups have a significant direct and indirect effect on business-IT alignment. The results suggest that building human resources and partnership is essential and play a key role to establish business-IT alignment contributing to business strategy.

This case study invites students to discuss strategic value creation through the use of information technology (IT). It raises issues of business model innovation, IT strategy, digital platforms, ecosystems, business-IT alignment, and leadership. The key character in the case is the Chief Information Officer, Paul Danneels, who is ready to drive the strategic transformation of the VDAB, the Flemish Employment Agency, from a service provider to a labor market conductor. Starting from a firm understanding of the VDAB's strategic choices, students should be able to discuss the positioning and role of the IT department as well as its views on value delivery.

IT alignment is one of the widely researched topics in the information systems research area and continue to be a top management concern. However, IT alignment in the context of public organizations is still less explored. A systematic literature review is conducted to provide an overview of the current status of the research in this area and the possible future research directions. Major databases and top conference proceedings in information systems and e-government area were searched by using key words to collect articles for analysis. Finally, a total of 58 articles were identified and included in the literature review. The findings of this study indicate case study research as the most preferred research method. But due to the small numbers of public organizations explored in these studies the results are problematic for generalisation. Apart from these findings we have identified and discussed the research concepts addressed in IT alignment in public organizations studies that were categorized using the dimensions of Strategic Alignment Maturity model. The findings of this study have revealed some potential future research directions that have been less explored like organizational culture, organizational politics, social interaction, and informal organizational structure influence on IT alignment in public organizations.

Business executives around the globe have recognised the significance of information technology (IT) and started adopting IT in their business processes. Firms always invest in adopting latest technologies in order to comply with the customer requirements despite of heavy investment companies are unable to avail optimum benefits from the underpinning technologies. Consequently IT does not support business the way it should have been and hence a misalignment between business and IT is created. In the current study various factors in a Saudi financial institution have been discussed and assessed that perturb alignments in both the entities. In the research study questionnaire approach has been used which is an effective tool to collect qualitative data. Finally, some recommendations have been suggested to bring business and IT into an alignment.

In the last years, the alignment issue was addressed in several researches and numerous methods, techniques and tools were proposed. Indeed, the business and IT performance are tightly coupled, and enterprises cannot be competitive if their business and IT strategies are not aligned. This paper proposes a literature review useful for evaluating different alignment approaches, with the aim of discovering similarity, maturity, capability to measure, model, asses and evolve the alignment level existing among business and technological assets of an enterprise. The proposed framework is applied to analyse the alignment research published in the Information & Management journal and the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, that are the ones that more published on this topic. The achieved evaluation results are presented.

Business-IT alignment (BITA) has gained attention during the last decade. As a result, a number of theoretical models that can be applied as supportive tools for assessing different components of BITA have been developed. However, most of these efforts have been produced in different countries and they ignore the factor that’s subjected to change due to cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on achieving BITA and influences its maturity. The research method and process follows the design science research and is done in three phases. First, an in-depth literature survey followed by a survey was carried out to identify and classify limitations of BITA attributes (based on Luftman’s strategic alignment maturity (SAM)) model and then, hypothesize the potential impact of organizational culture element (based on the Smit et al. model) on BITA attributes. Second, an empirical study is carried out to test the hypotheses in order to identify the limited BITA attributes based on organizational culture context. These attributes are further classified for proposing an extended version to the SAM model. Finally, the extended-SAM model is evaluated in 6 Swedish large and medium organizations to test its practicality for comparing its assessment with the assessment of the original SAM model.

Business/IT alignment is a major source of business value generated from IT and social structures at the interface between a firm’s business and IT units are of vital importance to business/IT alignment. Yet, there is a substantial gap in understanding the nature of these social structures. Based on a literature review comprising all related articles published in the AIS Senior Scholars’ Basket journals between January 2000 and August 2011, this paper identifies antecedents of alignment related to social network structure. These are translated into formal SNA concepts. The identification and formalization of social network structures allow IT governance to implement social engineering mechanisms influencing the social network structure, thus improving business/IT alignment and IT value. Examples for such translated arguments are high degree centrality of CIOs vis-à-vis other executives and strong ties in terms of cross-domain knowledge between CIOs and other executives. Finally, important avenues for future research are highlighted.

Business-IT alignment has been consistently ranked as the number one concern of IT and business executives. Maintaining the alignment has been found to lead to stronger business performance, higher perceived value of IT and improved IS strategic planning; therefore addressing the issue is both important and timely. The economic growth in China in the last decade has led to greater availability of IT and its widespread use as a critical resource. Despite the increasing interest in Chinese IS issues by both researchers and practitioners, empirical research focusing on human- and organization-related IS issues in China is scarce. Using data collected from 130 business and IT executives from 22 companies in China, 11 of which were multinationals operating in China, we explored several questions in the area of business-IT alignment. An instrument designed to measure the six dimensions of business-IT alignment maturity was cross-validated using a sample of companies in China. Then, the instrument was refined to develop a measurement method that offered better reliability and validity in the context of Chinese companies. The relationship between the alignment maturity dimensions and IS strategic alignment was then examined. Finally, the alignment maturity of companies in China was assessed to provide a snapshot of business-IT alignment in China. A comparison between the 11 Chinese domestic companies and 11 multinational operating in China provided insight into the different IT practices of the two types of companies. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.

The alignment of information technology (IT) with business strategies is optimal when harmony exists between organizational and system goals. Empirical evidence reveals that effective strategic alignment leads to superior financial performance for organizations. This observation has spurred extensive research into business-IT alignment. Yet, the issue of alignment remains a top concern for CIOs. We argue that the parochial view undertaken by past research into business-IT alignment is a probable cause for continuing system failures. Furthermore, strategic alignment research is limited and devoid within the requirements engineering discipline. In this paper, we highlight existing shortfalls of research in business-IT alignment, and bring to light insights that may be offered by other disciplines to augment this field. Subscribing to a multi-disciplinary perspective, we develop a goal-based framework that incorporates goals from various literatures in investigating business-IT alignment. One of the novelties of our proposed framework lies in its delineation between goals that have been originally assigned to stakeholders versus those interpreted by stakeholders. Additionally, the framework includes constructs at the strategic level for supporting the rationale of strategic level goals. We tested the usefulness and usability of this methodology in an organization with a newly developed information system founded on strategic business goals and reported lessons learnt from both researchers’ and practitioners’ perspectives.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to develop a framework for evaluating business‐IT alignment. Specifically, the authors emphasize internal business‐IT alignment between business and IS groups, which is a typical setting in recent boundary‐less, networked business environments.Design/methodology/approachBased on the previous studies, a socio‐technical approach was developed to explain how the functional integration in the business‐IT alignment process could be accomplished in collaborative environments. The study investigates the relationship among social alignment, technical alignment, IS effectiveness, and business performance.FindingsThe results indicated that alignment between business and IS groups increased IS effectiveness and business performance. Business‐IT alignment resulting from socio‐technical arrangements in firms' infrastructure has positive impacts on business performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited by control issues in terms of the impact of the confounding variables on business performance. Future studies need to validate the research model across industries. The study results imply that business‐IT alignment is a multidimensional concept that includes social and technical activities explaining the way people and information technology institutionalize business value.Originality/valueBy establishing a socio‐technical framework of business‐IT alignment, this study proposes a conceptual framework for business‐IT alignment that accounts for not only improved technical performance, but also improved human performance as well. This study emphasizes the importance of addressing internal socio‐technical collaboration in modern business environments.

Organisations introduce changes in order to adapt themselves to the extremely changing context. These changes often impact Information Technology (IT) and Business domains. In most of the cases, the scope of the organisational elements in these domains requiring adaptation is not well defined, leaving out elements, this can lead to misalignment. Thus, it is important to know the impact scope with the purpose of performing a full adaptation. When reviewing the literature in the Business-IT alignment research field, we found that there are no works providing support to deal with this aspect. However, there are several works in adjacent areas that have studied change management. In this paper, we report a systematic review of related work in these areas. From the review, we extract a set of clues applicable to the Business-IT alignment field what results in a change analysis framework and a set of rules to estimate impact scope and potential adaptation. Framework elements and rules are illustrated by means of a small example.

Researchers and practitioners have argued on the importance of business-IT alignment for organizations to maximize the business value of Information Technology (IT). As a result, a vast number of mechanisms have been designed to support organizations in achieving, assessing and maintaining business-IT alignment. One approach of such mechanism is to use Enterprise Architecture (EA), which is a continuously applied methodology for aligning the strategies of a business with its IT strategies. Despite the claims in the literature regarding the role of EA in resolving business-IT alignment concerns, it still not apparent how effective EA is in mediating the alignment concerns between business and IT. In this paper, the evaluation model to support practitioners in determining the effectiveness of EA to resolve Business-IT alignment is proposed. The model was constructed following design science as a research approach. The design science activities were carried out in until reaching a final artefact.

IT business alignment has become a key issue for many companies. Therefore a lot of companies, institutions and universities have published documents about this topic. This paper is intended to give an overview of these resources found in the Internet.

Prior research argues that alignment between business and information systems (IS) strategies enhances organizational performance. However, factors affecting alignment have received relatively little empirical attention. Moreover, IS strategic alignment is assumed to facilitate the performance of all organizations, regardless of type or business strategy. By using two studies of business firms and academic institutions, this paper: 1) develops and tests a model relating alignment, its antecedents, and its consequences and 2) examines differences in these relationships across organizational types and strategies. Findings indicate that alignment depends on shared domain knowledge and prior IS success, and also support the expected positive impact of alignment on organizational performance. Differences across Prospector, Analyzer, and Defender business strategies are examined. A key research contribution is the empirical demonstration that the importance of alignment, as well as the mechanisms used to attain alignment, vary by business strategy and industry. In past alignment studies, controlling for industry has not been uncommon. The findings suggest that future research studies should also control for business strategy. The article also empirically demonstrates that past implementation success influences alignment. In addition, it highlights the influence of a process variable, strategic planning, on the development of shared knowledge and, consequently, on alignment. This paper examines strategic issues related to the management of technology. Data from multiple surveys are used to test the extent to which strategic planning, shared business-IS knowledge, prior IS success, and other variables consistently enhance IS alignment. The study also provides empirical support for the popular argument that IS alignment improves organizational performance. It extends the current literature by examining the extent to which these findings hold across firm strategies and industries. The authors argue that not all firms are equally well served by allocating scarce resources to improve IS alignment.

A critical decision problem for top management, and the focus of this study, is whether the CEO (chief executive officer) and CIO (chief information officer) should commit their time to formal planning with the expectation of producing an information technology (IT)-based competitive advantage. Using the perspective of the resource-based view, a model is presented that examines how strategic IT alignment can produce enhanced organizational strategies that yield competitive advantage. One hundred sixty-one CIOs provided data using a postal survey. Results supported seven of the eight hypotheses. They showed that information intensity is an important antecedent to strategic IT alignment, that strategic IT alignment is best explained by multiple constructs which operationalize both process and content measures, and that alignment between the IT plan and the business plan is significantly related to the use of IT for competitive advantage. Study results raise questions about the effect of CEO participation, which appears to be the weak link in the process, and also about the perception of the CIO on the importance of CEO involvement. The paper contributes to our understanding of how knowledge sharing in the alignment process contributes to the creation of superior organizational strategies, provides a framework of the alignment-performance relationship, and furnishes several new constructs.