The evolution of the business-IT strategic alignment process: key insights and emergent views from a 40-year period (1975-2014)

Abstract

The process of business-information technology strategic alignment (BITSA) has been consistently ranked as a top priority by chief information officers (CIOs) and extensively studied for over three decades. Constructs on the BITSA process, frameworks for understanding its main components, models for predicting its successful occurrence, and methods for guiding toward a successful BITSA process have been reported. However, the BITSA literature appears as contrasted and fragmented for researchers, and copious and ambiguous for CIOs. Thus, in this paper we conduct a selective yet intensive literature review on the BITSA process with the aim to provide a summary of core concepts, an evolution model, and an account of theoretical and practical implications. Through this literature review, a four-stage evolution model of BITSA emerges and an updated view of the BITSA process as a complex adaptive system is supported.