Aligning Organizational Critical Activities and Information Technology Capabilities with Organizational Performance

Organizational critical activities (OCAs) are "activities that the organization considers first and invest lots of resources in and that are monitored and guided frequently by executives. Organizational critical activities are regarded as the activities that are indispensable and must be conducted for the short-, medium-, and long-term success by the organization". After interviewing 15 medium and senior supervisors of the hospitals, this research organizes and constructs a list of organizational critical activities, which includes three aspects (Internal Management, External Environment, and Innovation & Service). After the list of OCAs is found, the research interviews two vice presidents of the hospitals to refine the OCAs list. This research then conducted the questionnaire survey on executives of 151 large-scaled hospitals in Taiwan, and the questionnaire is divided into three parts (Organizational critical activities, Information technology capabilities, and Organizational performance). According to the past literature, strategic alignment was the key to organizational success. After the questionnaire copies are retrieved, fit as profile deviation [33] is taken to confirm whether the alignment between organizational critical activities and information technology capabilities exists. The result of this study shows that there is alignment between organizational critical activities and information technology capabilities, both of them have a significant influence on organizational performance. As the environment of the hospital in Taiwan is very competitive, this study expects that the list of OCAs in medical institutions of this study can serve as a reference when operators of hospitals make strategies and practice important activities.