A Model for Business-IT Alignment in Malaysian Public Universities

Abstract

Business-IT alignment is defined as a stage where the mission, objective, and planning within business strategy is shared and supported by IT strategy. This definition is extended to cover the situation where business executive and IT executive comprehended and committed towards achieving the mission, objective, and plan for both business and IT. One important issue in business–IT alignment study is the absence of alignment. By identifying factors to achieve business-IT alignment, the problem on the absence of alignment could be addressed. Due to the complexity of business-IT alignment, there is possibility that successful alignment focuses on managing specific alignment dimension by investigating factors that encourage particular dimension. Past studies have shown the relationship between business-IT alignment and organisation performance. However, only few researchers tried to relate between the factors with organisational performance. Therefore, the aim of this research is to contribute to the formation of a theoretical model influencing alignment dimension that has impact on organisational performance. The model is important to provide empirical evidence that confirms the importance of categorizing factors into dimensions in achieving business-IT alignment and their influence on universities’ performance.