Aligning Business and IT Strategies in Multi-Business Organizations

The alignment of business and information technology (IT) strategies is an important and enduring theoretical challenge for the information systems discipline, remaining a top issue in practice for the past twenty years. Multi-business organizations (MBOs), present a particular alignment challenge, where business strategies are developed at both the corporate level and within individual strategic business units (SBUs) across the corporate investment cycle. In contrast, the extant literature implicitly assumes that IT strategy is aligned with a single business strategy at a single point in time. This study draws on resource-based theory (RBT) and path dependence to reconceptualize business and IT strategic alignment in MBOs. Drawing on Makadok’s (2010; 2011) theory of profit, we show how functional, structural and dynamic alignment, create value in MBOs through three strategic drivers: governance, competence and flexibility. This has implications for existing IT alignment models, providing alternative theoretical explanations of how IT alignment creates value

Stategy, Business and Information Sistem´s Alignment: A Review of Literature

Treball Final de Màster Universitari en Direcció d'Empreses / Master in Management. Codi: SRO011. Curs acadèmic 2018-2019The IT is key in the digital era, and the organizations in order to succeed in the globalization environment should be focused in the alignment between the information systems and their organization as a whole. Consequently, the way the companies are approaching the topic is continuously evolving, and as the company in order to keep the pace of the rapid changes, departments are becoming more and more agile. Moreover, the role of IT is evolving having an impact in customer service, sales and the most important business strategy (Newman, 2016). The objective of this literature review, is to analyze studies related to IT alignment, check the conclusions of the selected reports included and the classify the them depending on the typology of alignment specified in each one of them. To conclude, the report (Gerow, Tratcher and Grover, 2014) explains 6 definitions of alignment depending on various factors and it will help to expand the topic of alignment

Epistemic Mirroring: understanding the interdependence between a firm’s governance of internal relations and its interpretation of the digital ecosystem architecture

The mirroring hypothesis asserts a symmetry between how a firm organizes its activities and tasks internally (division of labour) and how technologies are logically partitioned into subcomponents and modules. Yet digital artifacts can violate fundamental properties of physical modular systems, such as the impossibility to univocally allocate functionalities to the various modules, due to their agnostic and generative nature. Although an increasing amount of works is starting to question the usefulness of classic modularity theory to understand how firms take decisions and organize their activities internally, there is still a scant literature on the topic. In this work we draw upon the mirror hypothesis, and complement it with the insight provided by the IT governance literature. By doing so, we suggest that a company’s epistemic interpretation of the modular nature of a digital system depends on the dynamics of its internal decision-making process, reflecting formal and informal patterns of authority among its actors. Our study is evidenced by an extensive case study of the roll-out of an advanced technology by a large global multinational. In this was we study whether, and how, is it possible to establish interdependence between the way in which a firm makes sense of, and resolves, the conflicting goals and objectives of its internal actors and the way in which it interprets and conceives of the architecture of the digital ecosystem it is part of. We term this epistemic mirroring

Epistemic Mirroring: How firms’ governance of internal relations shapes the interpretation of a digital ecosystem architecture

The mirroring hypothesis asserts a symmetry between how a firm organizes its activities and tasks internally (division of labour) and how technologies are logically partitioned into subcomponents and modules. Yet digital artifacts can violate fundamental properties of physical modular systems, such as the impossibility to univocally allocate functionalities to the various modules, due to their agnostic and generative nature. Although an increasing amount of works is starting to question the usefulness of classic modularity theory to understand how firms take decisions and organize their activities internally, there is still a scant literature on the topic. In this work we draw upon the mirror hypothesis, and complement it with the insight provided by the IT governance literature. By doing so, we suggest that a company’s epistemic interpretation of the modular nature of a digital system depends on the dynamics of its internal decision-making process, reflecting formal and informal patterns of authority among its actors. Our study is evidenced by an extensive case study of the roll-out of an advanced technology by a large global multinational. In this was we study whether, and how, is it possible to establish interdependence between the way in which a firm makes sense of, and resolves, the conflicting goals and objectives of its internal actors and the way in which it interprets and conceives of the architecture of the digital ecosystem it is part of. We term this epistemic mirroring

Assessing the Determinants of Business Value Related to IT Projects: A Strategic Alignment Perspective of Public-Sector Organisations in Saudi Arabia

Strategic alignment is considered an important construct in the study of business value related to IT projects. The proposed research study aims to identify and analyse the key determinants of business value related to IT projects using a business/IT strategy alignment perspective in Saudi public-sector organisations. The study will utilise a mixed methods design that includes a sample of senior managerial staff drawn from the financial and economic sectors in Saudi Arabia. Qualitative data will be collected via semi-structured interviews (n=15-20 participants) and quantitative data will be collected via survey (n=150-200 participants). Quantitative data will be analysed using SmartPLS software and qualitative data will be analysed using the NVivo software. The key findings from the data set will be discussed in depth to provide a deeper understanding of the determinants of business value related to IT projects from a strategic alignment perspective in public-sector organisations in Saudi Arabia

DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR SOCIAL COMMERCE RESEARCH THROUGH INTEGRATION WITH BIG DATA ANALYSIS

Information systems designers face great opportunities and challenges in developing a holistic big data research approach for the new analytics savvy generation. In addition business intelligence is largely utilized in the business community and thus can leverage the opportunities from the abundant data and domain-specific analytics in many critical areas. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of these trends in the current business context through evidence-based documentation of current and emerging applications as well as their wider business implications. In this paper, we use BigML to examine how the two social information channels (i.e., friends-based opinion leaders-based social information) influence consumer purchase decisions on social commerce sites. We undertake an empirical study in which we integrate a framework and a theoretical model for big data analysis. We conduct an empirical study to demonstrate that big data analytics can be successfully combined with a theoretical model to produce more robust and effective consumer purchase decisions. The results offer important and interesting insights into IS research and practice

Investigating the Complexity of Organizational Digitization and Firm Performance: A Set-Theoretic Configurational Approach

This study investigates the causal complexity and diversity of the relationship between organizational digitization and firm performance. Digitization – defined as the penetration of IT in the organization – is a complex organizational phenomenon in that it involves changes in organizational strategy, business processes, organizational knowledge and eventually the whole socio-technical organizational system, thus influencing organizational performance. We adopt a holistic configuration theory lens and a set-theoretic method, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explain how such interdependent relationships among digitization and organizational strategic elements result in high firm performance. We apply the set-theoretic method to a longitudinal field data set collected from 1816 Canadian firms. We found multiple equifinal configurations that result in high performance. By comparing the similarities and differences within and between the configurations, we could explain the multifaceted roles that digitization plays in achieving high performance together with organizational strategies

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE RENEWAL OF BUSINESS MODELS

With the advent of the information age, shrinking product lifecycles and intense competition, organizations continuously seek to renew their business models to exploit new market opportunities. Existing literature suggests that advances in IT and the rise of corporate-wide IT platforms facilitate the use of IT resources across the organization and can drive the evolution of business models. However, we still know little about the role of IT in enabling successful business models. This study investigates the relationship between corporate IT platforms and business model evolution. We examine the case of DHL Express to understand how its efforts to build a corporate IT platform influenced the company’s business model. Drawing on insights from prior literature and findings from the DHL case, we discuss evidence that corporate IT platforms enable business model evolution to the extent that they generate digital options that can be exercised by managers to renew value propositions for customers

The Fuzzy Front-End of Digital Transformation: Three Perspectives on the Formulation of Organizational Change Strategies

The fuzzy front-end describes the random and generally vague initial stages of an innovation project. Since digital transformation can be seen as innovation process of an organization, improving the initial stages can be beneficial for the entire process. This literature review takes the unique perspective of the fuzzy front-end within digital transformation. Characteristics of and challenges in formulating of organizational change strategies are reviewed in three different domains: information systems (IS), management & strategy (MS), and organization science (OS). The results show that within IS, the role of information systems has changed from a process-oriented to a more strategic role and digital technology skills become more important during strategy formulation. Within MS, there is a strong focus on interpreting external signals and reacting to them. In OS, the formulation of a change strategy is seen as a collaborative process between leadership and the workforce. The results from this review should encourage the research on digital transformation to focus to a greater extent on the initial phase of strategy formulation