Combination of IT strategic alignment and IT governance to evaluate strategic alignment maturity

Abstract

Business/IT strategic alignment has been discussed as a key subject for managers for a long time. This is while IT governance is also amongst the most important organizational subjects. Indeed, since IT has become an important resource for organizations, the governance of this resource is an essential subject that the organizations must go through. Combination of IT strategic alignment with IT governance could be an effective strategic innovation allowing organizations make efficient use of IT. For this reason, this research, aiming to find a way of achieving business/IT strategic alignment in organizations, and considering the issue of IT governance and identification of proper factors of COBIT framework, evaluates maturity level of strategic alignment in Iran's banking and financial organizations. Findings of the research are indicative of the importance of paying attention to both alignment and governance of IT in organizations, and use of the results in strategic planning of the organizations. In this research, collecting data from 124 senior, middle, and junior managers of 7 Iranian banking/financial organizations, and while evaluating maturity level of alignment using factor analysis and structural equation model (SEM), we study the relationship between the alignment achieved through Luftman Model and IT governance as the independent factor in presence and absence of identified COBIT factors.