An Empirical Test of IS Leadership as the Driving Force in Improving IS Performance: The Service Level Perspective

Abstract

Existing information system (IS) studies have conceptualized various IS competences and investigated empirically how these competences can impact IS performance. However, these studies incorporate only a few IS competences and the relationships among them are not taken into consideration. This paper is intended to fill these gaps. A more comprehensive set of IS competences is incorporated and the service level perspective of the Strategic Alignment Model is applied to establish the theoretical foundation. An empirical test of the model is conducted. The results show that IS leadership positively impacts IS performance by driving other IS competences. These results partially validate the service level perspective of the alignment model. The model development and test also demonstrate that we need to consider all the information, IT, and organization challenges when dealing with IS management issues. Implications of this research for future studies and practice are presented at the end.