INVESTIGATING INFORMATION SYSTEMS STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Although strategic alignment is an important theoretical concept, and achieving alignment or fit among organizational elements would seem to be an important business objective, empirical demonstrations of the importance of alignment have been uncommon (White 1986). This study attempted to provide an empirical assessment of the nature and importance of information systems strategic alignlnen

Development of Information Systems Project Portfolio Management Capabilities: A Case Study on an Australian Bank

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) has emerged as an effective technique to manoeuvre and align projects and programs with business strategy. Strategic alignment empowers the Information Systems (IS) function and Information Technology (IT) enabled initiatives to support business development. To this end, organisations are using more IS projects and programs to enable them to compete. The literature identifies Information Systems Project Portfolio Management (IS PPM) capabilities but lacks empirical research on how these develop. This research seeks to address this gap by investigating how capabilities develop over time. This case study research adopts the Dynamic Capabilities theoretical lens to validate capabilities against existing research. It retrospectively analyses how these developed over time and examines how other portfolios may be able to embrace and ‘learn’ such capabilities. This study focuses on a portfolio of IS projects within a major Australian banking and financial institution. This study explores the top-down and bottom-up approach in building capabilities over time.

Developing a taxonomy for the understanding of business and it alignment paradigms and tools

The alignment of information technology with business objectives tends to be a managerial priority in modern organisations. Thus, practitioners and researchers have proposed different approaches to assess this relationship, some following similar approaches whilst others proposing different ones. The variety of approaches proposed, however, has created confusion about the applicability and context in which these approaches can be used. Thus, aiming to tackle this challenge, this paper proposes a taxonomy that organises and compares studies of alignment assessment in terms of their theoretical constructors and their practical use. The taxonomy is build around two research sources: a) a review of the literature of alignment and b) a framework for comparing IS methodologies. The structure of the taxonomy permits insights into studies by means of six theoretical (objective, nature of strategy, paradigm, dimension, type of measurement, model) and six practical constructors (audience, scope, output, techniques, product, target). The taxonomy is then applied to six assessment studies. The benchmarking analysis of these helped to identify their theoretical basis and its practical use, and confirms the need for more practical mechanisms to assess alignment. Additionally, it becomes apparent that process perspectives and social understanding of alignment are the two main paradigms for alignment

An investigation of aligning project management to business strategy: A review and conceptual framework

Copyright (C) 2011/12 ISEing.This paper discusses in depth the factors that lead to misalignment between the project management and the business strategy by investigating four case studies in the telecomunications industry in Saudi Arabia. Project management has been an important issue for many years and for many companies worldwide. Many implementations of project management (PM) have been successful, while others have failed to deliver the outcome of the project. The literature indicates that misalignment between large projects and the business strategy leads to 30% of all projects failing. Indeed, the literature highlights few internal factors (e.g. effective communication, executive support, involving the project manager in the business strategy development, and the project manager leadership competence) that may tie the project management to the company's business strategy. However, this study indicates very important external factors that affect the implementation of the company's business strategy. A framework will be developed to provide a clear guide to the project management efforts towards a competitive business strategy

Business and Information System Alignment Theories Built on eGovernment Service Practice: An Holistic Literature Review

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This chapter examines previous studies of alignment between business and information systems holistically in relation to the development of working associations among professionals from information system and business backgrounds in business organization and eGovernment sectors while investigating alignment research that permits the development and growth of information system, which is appropriate, within budget and on-time development. The process of alignment plays a key role in the construction of dependent associations among individuals from two different groups, and the progress of alignment could be enhanced by emerging an information system according to the investors’ prospects. The chapter presents system theory to gather and analyze the data across the designated platforms. The outcomes classify that alignment among business and information system departments remains a priority and is of worry in different ways in diverse areas, which provides prospects for the forthcoming discussion and research.Final Published versio

Using tactical and operational factors to assess strategic alignment: an SME study

The strategic use of Information Technology (IT), better known as strategic alignment, has significantly increased, as a result of the strong dependence of organisational activity on Information Systems (IS) and their related technologies. Strategic alignment is considered as a key element to improve performance on organisations, enhance efficiency and allow organisations to be more competitive in their respective industry. One of the first steps towards achieving strategic alignment is to have adequate means to measure it. Current assessment approaches, though, are mainly focused at the strategic level but provide little insight at tactical and operational levels, which are recognized as important areas for achieving strategic alignment. Furthermore, most of the existing approaches are tested in large organisations and there is little research on assessing the effectiveness of these approaches for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This paper proposes an alternative instrument that rather than focusing only at the strategic level it aims to have a better understanding by measuring alignment at tactical and operational levels. Finally this paper presents the findings of applying this instrument on an SME

Comparing alignment factors in SMEs and large organizations: a planning integration perspective

Measurement of the alignment between business strategies and information systems (IS) has demonstrated positive impact for the organizational performance. The factors that have proved relevant when assessing the maturity level of alignment are: communication, competency/value measurement, governance, partnership, architecture & scope, and skills. Existing research, however, has focused on the assessment of these factors on large organizations and has barely explored their impact on Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). This paper uses the data provided by 127 participants from large and SMEs in order to identify whether the aforementioned factors are also relevant for assessing the level of alignment maturity in SMEs. The results from this research suggest that there are not significant differences between large organizations and SMEs when assessing those factors. In addition, this research also explored the relation between different planning integration of alignment (independent, sequential and simultaneous) in order to measure the perceived relevance of the factors. The results suggest that the planning integration identified on SMEs and large organizations has a positive correlation on how these factors are ranked. For both SMEs and large organizations where the formulation is simultaneous, the relevance of the factors is higher perceived than it is for those where the formulation is independent or sequential

IT-Business strategic alignment in influencing sustainable competitive advantage in Jordan: Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach

In many review articles or studies, the researchers have encouraged further exploration on the causal links between Information Technology (IT) investments and a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage.The outcomes of empirical studies have been inconclusive, which is to a certain extent due to the omission of IT-business strategic alignment.Indeed, strategic alignment has emerged as one of the most important issues facing business and IT executives all over the world. This paper reports on the empirical investigation of the success factors, which consist of leadership, structure and process, service quality, and values and beliefs, which are representative of the culture gap between IT strategy and business strategy.A questionnaire survey among 200 IT managers was carried out and 172 data sets were collected.This represented a 86% response rate. After a rigorous data screening process including outliers, normality, reliability and validity, 172 data sets were ready for structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed to examine the composite reliability, convergent validity and goodness of fit of the individual constructs and measurement models. The revised structural model demonstrates the relationships between all the four exogenous variables and IT-business strategic alignment, and all the four exogenous variables and sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, regarding the revised model there are two mediating effects of strategic alignment in the relationship between leadership, structure and process, service quality, values and beliefs, and sustainable competitive advantage

The Role of Boards in Reviewing Information Technology Governance (ITG) as Part of Organizational Control Environment Assessments

IT Governance (ITG) is an important topic as US companies must now monitor ITG under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) (Hoffmann, 2003). Trites (2003) indicates that directors are responsible for strategic planning, internal control structures and business risk. The control environment is defined in Australian Auditing Standard AUS 402 to mean "the overall attitude, awareness and actions of management regarding internal control and its importance to the entity". This paper contributes to the knowledge of ITG by forming an integrated ITG Literature (IIL) which links prior research to four key dimensions of ITG. The paper presents a review of literature on ITG performance measurement systems which assess the ability of organizations to achieve these four ITG dimensions. A revised ITG Dimensions Model offered for consideration. The final contribution of the paper is to propose critical issues Boards should consider as part of their assessment of organizational control environments