business-IT Alignment Research Articles

Effects on agility of IT-business alignment

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings In the context of the Indian finance industry, strong links between IT and the rest of the firm promotes agility. However, market turbulence positively influences market responsiveness but has the reverse effect on process-related agility. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

A reference model-based user requirements elicitation process: Toward operational business-IT alignment in a co-creation value network

Abstract Context To improve operational business-IT alignment (BITA), the development of IT-based systems should be derived from business requirements. However, the requirements elicitation process is challenging and encounters several problems which might lead to acquiring low-quality user requirements and failure of systems development projects. Many of elicitation problems are also identified as being relevant in the BITA literature. We focus on one category of well-known elicitation problems, such as communication flaws. Until now, the majority of requirements elicitation studies with the aim of addressing operational BITA are based on an asking strategy. This elicitation strategy is suitable for relatively stable situations. To compensate for the limitation of this strategy in a more complex situation, e.g., a co-creation value network (VN) setting, using it in conjunction with other elicitation strategies is more likely to yield satisfactory results. Objective To contribute to operational BITA improvement in a VN setting by addressing one category of elicitation problems. For this purpose, we design and evaluate a reference model-based approach to facilitate the user requirements elicitation process. Method Two-phase research according to the design science approach is followed. In the design phase, a reference model-based user requirements elicitation process is designed. Also, as a proof of concept, two instances of this artifact are designed. Two reference models, respectively, describing customer knowledge management processes and customer knowledge management challenges in a VN setting are used separately in designing these two instances. In the evaluation phase, the applicability and usefulness of these instances are evaluated in two separate studies. Results A reference model supports asking-based user requirements elicitation process via a Delphi method in a complex context of a VN. It improves the user requirements elicitation process by addressing a set of recognized elicitation problems. Conclusions The reference model-based approach, by addressing the elicitation problems, contributes to user requirements elicitation process improvement in general and to a better operational BITA in the complex situation of a VN in particular.

An Intangible-Asset Approach to Strategic Business-IT Alignment

The correct use of information technology (IT) in business is a longstanding critical issue due to the competitive advantages and performance that IT generates when it is managed strategically and correctly aligned with a business’ strategies and processes. A conceptual model is presented to investigate the effects of intangible assets and organizational capabilities on business-IT strategic alignment. Social networks between business and IT executives conform to relational capital that permits the creation of combinative capabilities; these capabilities encourage the transfer, integration, learning, and strategic use of business and IT executives’ knowledge, and affect the level of strategic business-IT alignment. This combination of social-network characteristics and organizational capabilities in order to generate strategic business-IT alignment is new.

The 2018 SIM IT Issues and Trends Study1

This article presents the findings of the Society for Information Management’s 38th Anniversary IT Trends Study, with responses from IT executives in 793 organizations, including 495 CIOs. Positive trends endure, with IT budgets, salaries, hiring, and CIO time spent in the C-suite all up. The top five IT investments in 2018 were Analytics, Cybersecurity, Cloud, Software Development & Maintenance and ERP. CIOs’ top five most “worrisome” management issues were Cybersecurity, Talent, Perception of IT Leadership, Business-IT Alignment, and Business Continuity. Over 80% of CIOs came from other organizations and the percentage with non-IT backgrounds has more than tripled in 36 months to 26.3%. The CIO job is increasingly complex and arguably the most challenging in any organization.

Proposal model of change for Business IT Alignment

Nowadays, business IT alignment must remain absolutely scalable over time, be more effective and prepare to be agile to deal with environmental changes. These changes have an impact on the factors leading to a harmonic relationship between strategy and information technology (IT). However, business IT alignment is not easy to achieve and maintain. Therefore, it is essential to know the scope of the impact in the complete adaptation of alignment by making the relationships of the alignment elements ready to treat change as a critical discipline by choosing to make them fluid and agile. Over the literature, the research on the factor of change and strategic alignment to make a system agile and aligned is not overly developed. This lack has led us to propose a meta-model that formalizes change to make strategic alignment fluid and more agile by determining agility between abstraction levels including the relationship of business IT alignment domains.

Resource allocation approach to associate business-IT alignment to enterprise architecture design

Enterprise architecture (EA) development is always a superior way to address business-IT alignment (BITA) issue. However, most EA design frameworks are inadequate to allocate IT resources, which is an important metric of BITA maturity. Under this situation, the idea of IT resource allocation is combined with the EA design process, in order to extend prior EA research on BITA and to demonstrate EA's capability of implementing IT governance. As an effective resource allocation method, portfolio decision analysis (PDA) is used to align business functions of business architecture and applications of system architecture. Furthermore, this paper exhibits an illustrative case with the proposed framework.

How enterprise architecture influences strategic alignment maturity: structural equation modelling

Despite increasing investment on IT projects, the business expectations have not yet been met. Hence, proving the value of IT investment is the fundamental debate of information system (IS) researches. In particular, IT-business alignment is critically important because of its substantial impact on the value generated by the investment in IT. Strategic alignment remains a top concern for business and IT executives; therefore, organisations have deployed different approaches to reach strategic alignment and competitive advantage. Enterprise architecture (EA) has been viewed as an effective approach for managing IT assets, aligning IT investment and business requirements and yet, empirical research on how EA building blocks effect strategic alignment is lagging. This paper empirically investigates the relationship between EA building blocks and strategic alignment and indicates that EA would be viewed as an enabler for strategic alignment maturity.

A Methodology for Automatic Formal Verification of Enterprise Architecture

For over a decade, IT-business alignment has been ranked as a top-priority management concern, but there is little research on practical ways to achieve the alignment. EA development is a continuous iterative process, which implicitly ensures the achievement of a specific IT-business alignment level. Therefore, it is necessary to formalize the requirements for architecture and be able to automatically verify them. The authors propose a new methodology for detecting logical contradictions in enterprise architecture models based on a model checking approach adopted in the context of business modeling. In such a methodology, they use ArchiMate standard for a conceptual enterprise architecture description language which is fully aligned with TOGAF. The authors also offer several important verification queries and demonstrate practical applicability of their approach using a software prototype of the modeling tool which exploits MIT Alloy Analyzer model checking framework integrated with AchiMate Archi workbench.

Strategic IT-business alignment and organizational agility: from a developing country perspective

PurposeThis study aims to test a model in which the effect of strategic information technology (IT)-business alignment on organizational agility is examined by the moderating influence of environmental uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThis research utilizes a matched-pair survey data collected from 300 IT and business executives working in various privately owned Indian financial enterprises, and structural equation modeling is used to examine the alignment–agility linkage.FindingsThe analysis demonstrates the positive effect of alignment on agility (studied as business process and market responsive agilities), and alignment is more effective on business process agility than market responsive agility. However, the moderation analysis reveals that in a highly uncertain environment, alignment has more effect on market responsive agility but not on business process agility.Originality/valueAlthough previous studies (mostly conducted in the context of developed countries) have reported about the positive IT-business alignment and organizational agility linkage, the literature is silent regarding the influence of external contingent factors on this relationship from a developing country perspective. The authors have conceptualized alignment on the basis of strategic alignment maturity model and meticulously examined its relationship with both categories of agility. This research extends the alignment-agility theory and provides empirical support for this unique association from a developing country (i.e. India) perspective, and thereby, greatly contributes to the alignment literature.

An Empirical Analysis of Social Dimension Factors Towards Better IT Service Quality for Malaysian Public Agencies

Information technology (IT) has become an important part in enabling business decisions and strategies in organizations. The IT unit established in various organizations is responsible to ensure that different business units receive the expected level of technical assistance which they require. However, in many cases, the common understanding between business and IT is rarely achieved. This leads to the debate on how business and IT can be aligned in ensuring better IT services is provided to the end-users. Hence, there is a need to identify critical social factors that lead to better alignment thus leads to better service quality. This paper aims to conceptualize how business-IT alignment would have the impact to IT services through the social aspects of cognition, shared knowledge, and communication. A model is derived from the findings of the literatures and tested within the domain of the Malaysian agriculture public sectors using quantitative method. Results indicate that there are positive impacts of social dimensions towards business-IT alignment and thus has a significant impact towards IT service quality. This model reveals the insight on the importance of social alignment dimension factors in achieving better IT service quality in government agency setting.

Understanding the success of strategic IT benchmarking—Exploring the role of the individual level

IT organizations use strategic IT benchmarking (SITBM) to improve business-IT alignment or for developing IT strategies. However, SITBM often does not result in the desired outcomes. Because the extant literature does not contribute to improving SITBM success, we conduct a deductive-inductive study to understand which factors distinguish successful and unsuccessful SITBM. We find that traditional project-level factors do not explain SITBM success; they are necessary but not sufficient. Rather, we show that the individual level is instrumental for explaining SITBM success, especially by ensuring the buy-in of relevant project team members – a perspective not yet discussed by pertinent literature.

Making the Information Technology (IT) Business Alignment Works: A Framework of IT-based Competitive Strategy

Seamless IT-business integration enables superior performance and provides value creation opportunities for an enterprise to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Yet, creating IT-business alignment remains a challenge. Some users consider the existing IT-business alignment methodologies too complicated for practical implementation. This paper proposes a simplified and practical framework, an IT-based competitive strategy framework, to align an IT strategy with enterprise businesses based on a design science research methodology. The framework consists of three elements to formulate a comprehensive IT-based strategy, i.e., value drivers of IT implementation, competitive factors and an IT competitive strategy. The framework evaluation includes interviewing experts and practitioners, applying the proposed framework in an Indonesian enterprise and assessing the framework benefits on a qualitative basis. The observational evaluation with the experts concludes that the proposed framework is helpful for the targeted users. The framework application in a company also demonstrates the advantage and the usefulness of the proposed framework.

A study of IS assets, IS ambidexterity, and IS alignment: the dynamic managerial capability perspective

This study aims to explore how IT-business alignment can be better achieved. Drawing on the dynamic capability view, information systems (IS) alignment and IS ambidexterity are theorized as IT departments’ ordinary capability and dynamic managerial capability, respectively. Four IS assets are identified as antecedents of both IS ambidexterity and IS alignment. A research model with 14 hypotheses is tested with a sample of 162 manufacturing firms. The PLS analysis shows that IS ambidexterity can increase IS alignment in terms of operational support and that the four IS assets can affect IS alignment directly or indirectly. Implications for research and practice are provided.

Organizational Structure's Influence on Business-IT Alignment

Despite the long list of cumulative research, business-IT alignment remains to be evasive for practitioners and researchers. As organizations continue to spend a significant amount of their resources on IT to improve the variety and quality of services, achieving and maintaining business-IT alignment is a timely issue. Studies indicate that organizational structure, among other factors, plays an important role on whether organizations succeed in achieving business-IT alignment. A systematic literature review is conducted to provide an overview of previous studies as well as point out possible future research directions. A total of 31 articles were identified and included in the review. The findings indicate that there are few studies poised to address the lack of knowledge on how the formal/informal organizational structure's influence on business-IT alignment. The study presents a summary of previous findings on organizational structure's influence on business-IT alignment and identifies potential future research directions.

Business-IT Alignment Literature Review

The purpose of this article is to portray the knowledge evolution paths of business-IT alignment (BITA) research and identify a set of important papers in the development of BITA, and elucidate the intellectual structure of this field. This study collected 309 papers published during the period 1983-2015 from the Web of Science (WOS) database. Using a variety of bibliometric and visualization analytic techniques such as citation analysis, co-citation analysis and main path analysis, this article (1) delineates the significant knowledge flows of BITA research and identifies 15 important papers in this field; (2) graphically maps the influential countries, institutions, and journals of BITA research; (3) identifies four major research themes: BITA model, measurement, antecedents, and dynamics, and visualizing the relationships among them. Based on these findings, recommendations for the future research directions have suggested. This article provides IT practitioners, executives, and scholars with a new perspective to get a better understanding of BITA.

Agile Data Architecture in Mining Industry for Continuously Business-IT Alignment: EA Perspective

Data plays a vital role particularly in mining enterprises to foster innovation and business performance through precise decision-making. Scientists have created many kinds of database technology to support them, such as big data, data cloud, etc. Meanwhile business is always facing a fluctuant situation in using those various database technologies. Unfortunately, there is still hard to use database technology in a proper way because there are no model rules in making a perfect planning so that they can choose suitable tools for its own case. Therefore, this paper aims to design an agile enterprise data architecture model rules (blueprint) in mining company based on various frameworks, tools and methods/techniques so that managers can govern their data asset for sustainably business-IT alignment. This data architecture reference models can be easily adopted by CIOs in order to move toward an integrated mining enterprises as well as guide user in producing a precise decision-making.

IT-Business Alignment Problem Solution by Means of Zachman Model: Case of Woodworking Enterprise

IT-Business Alignment Problem Solution by Means of Zachman Model: Case of Woodworking Enterprise

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT MATURITY AND ITS EFFECT ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF JAPANESE SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

Purpose:Using a conceptual framework of Sledgianowski and Luftman (2001), this paper empirically investigates how Japanese SMEs view their Strategy Alignment Maturity, Short-term Linkage, and Organizational Performance. The author examines a theoretical framework for assessing strategic alignment maturity by using a survey data of Japanese small and medium companies. The relationship between strategic alignment maturity and the mutual understanding of business and IT objectives between business and IT executives is analyzed. Methodology: The methodology of this study is quantitative. Three hundred fifty-four (354) Japanese firm-level data collected have beenanalyzed using structural equation modeling. Main Findings:The results show that factors associated with IT-Business Alignment Maturityof Japanese SMEs are statistically significantly positively related to organizational performance. However, those are statistically significantly negatively related to Short-term Linkage.Although the linkage of information system plans with organizational objectives (business plans) are positively related, this study implies that the linkage of information systems and each factor of IT–Business Alignment Maturity is rather weakas previous empirical literature suggested. Applications:This study can be applied to the firm-level analyses where IT-Business Alignment Maturity and Short-term Linkage are in issue. Novelty/Originality:The author examines the relationship between strategic alignment maturity and organizational performance by using a survey data of Japanese small and medium companies.

Why aren't we eating our own dog food?

CanTel was one of the fastest growing Canadian telecommunications companies that provided telephone, cable, Internet, and cloud services. In 2015, the company employed over 40,000 employees and boasted of achieving over Cdn$10 billion of annual revenue and serving over 10 million customers. As a cloud service provider, the company faced a dilemma of not being able to fulfill the IT needs of its internal business units. As a result, one of the business units, Digital Channel, resorted to a third-party cloud service, and this set an example for other business units to follow suit. Jeff Smith, the CEO of the company CanTel, and the CIO Jane Lockhart had to find a solution to the issue that had significant implications to its business-IT alignment and IT governance.

IT Governance and ERP Post-implementation: Analysing the Impact of IT Business Alignment and IT Benefits Management on ERP Operation and Enhancement

IT Governance and ERP Post-implementation: Analysing the Impact of IT Business Alignment and IT Benefits Management on ERP Operation and Enhancement