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

Governança de TI nos Bancos de Varejo Brasileiros: Comportamento e Tendências

A Governança Corporativa, assim como a Governança de TI continuam sendo prioridades nas organizações para sustentar as suas operações e assegurar que possam implementar as estratégias necessárias para expandir as suas atividades no futuro. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi analisar os resultados e tendências de requisitos e  práticas de governança de TI nos bancos no Brasil. O método survey foi utilizado na pesquisa. Três questionários foram considerados, sendo o bloco 1 com perguntas sobre os bancos e respondentes, o bloco 2 sobre requisitos para atender a governança de TI e o bloco 3 sobre as práticas implementadas e a implantar até 2017. Os questionários foram enviados para mais de 100 bancos e respondentes e houve 41 respostas completas. Foi utilizada a escala Likert nas opções das alternativas. As informações coletadas foram estatisticamente analisadas utilizando: 1) Análise Descritiva e 2) Segmentação de Perfis por meio da análise de Cluster. Os resultados obtidos indicam quais requisitos e práticas estão sendo utilizados pelas instituições pesquisadas; em quais fases de implantação se encontram no cenário atual, bem como, qual é a previsão para implantação em 2017. Também são avaliados os resultados sobre a adesão dessas práticas e principais benefícios dos requisitos para atender a governança de TI. 

Looking for efective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT Alignment

Aligning Business and Information Technologies strategies has been a subject studied for a long time. Despite all the efforts, achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment remains a challenge requiring even more agility nowadays to keep up with the competition in a turbulent organizational environment. Past contributions are uncovered in this paper calling particular attention to the development of Enterprise Architecture as a way of addressing this challenge. However, this should be a process to be carried out in the most effective ways looking especially at time and costs. Having proposed frameworks as a point of departure to reflect on the ways they may or may not work in practice, a dialogical action research is proposed for this work involving a close interaction with consultant companies. The resulting improved expertise both from the researcher and practitioners involved should allow for the identification of the most effective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment.(undefined

Flexibility Based Metrics at Diagnosis of New Technology Adoption

Internet of things (IoT) as a new technology. On the other hand, IT engineers became a captive of me to desire by cases of other companies that introduced new technologies. However, due to the shortage of insufficient building and using information technology (IT) skills and undeveloped information system architecture, many companies cannot appreciate the utility that the information system should bring. When deciding to adopt new technology, many corporations need a framework for considering the availability of new technology. Therefore, this paper presents a diagnostic decision-making framework for answering whether to adopt a new technology just now. The scheme is consisted with balanced scorecard, IT infrastructure library and COBIT, and uses three indexes, defined by the penalty of change as a function of cost and time, such as MIS flexibility, meaning ease of change defined as a critical success factor, MIS reward as a key performance indicator, and MIS value as an important goal indicator. And, this framework presents a thinking process and criteria for deciding whether to develop information systems in-house, to purchase as a product, or to customize a ready-made software to the needs of the company. In order to make the discussion concrete, this paper uses IoT as an example of new technology

Developing a Web-bases System of Bengkulu Tourist

One of the main programs of local government of Bengkulu city is tourism sector development. One of its main activities is to promote tourism objects. Internet technology is one of the ideal channel and a powerful tool to promote tourism with a very low cost. By this technology, it can provide information in a web form, so the users will easily find information such as several options of attractive tourist destination places and supporting the existing facilities at each tourist attraction. Results from testing respondents obtained 19% strongly agreed, 55% agreed, 16% neutral and 10% disagreed. With this result, we can conclude that the system can help the local government of Bengkulu city in promoting its tourism objects. In addition, this system can also be useful as informative inputs for investors who want to develop a specific tourist attraction. The expected impact of this system is the number of tourists visiting the city of Bengkulu significantly increased

Examining Changes In The Strategic Alignment Models Alignment Factors Over Time: A Case Study

The strategic alignment model of Henderson and Venkatraman (1994) views IS alignment as occurring among four factors: business strategy, organization infrastructure and processes, IS strategy, and IS infrastructure and processes. Henderson and Venkatraman view strategic alignment as occurring via simultaneous or concurrent attention to all four domains. A single case study was conducted to examine how changes in the alignment factors actually occur over time. Our findings suggest that while H& V indicated the SAM is a descriptive model, it explains few of the changes that actually occurred in the case and has limited applicability as a descriptive model

Impact Of Business And Information Strategies Alignment On Business Performance

Alignment between business strategy and information strategy has been in focus for several years. It can be stated that the research suggests different explanations and differs in how alignment influences firms’ performance. In this paper, we present results from an investigation among firms in Slovenia in which we asked about how they perceive that their business strategy and information strategy were aligned to each other. Respondents’ statements about alignment were then checked against the firms’ turnover growth. One conclusion, which is possible to draw from the analysis, is that there is a significant relationship between alignment and turnover growt

Using ITIL to Improve IT Services

This paper examines the adoption and implementation of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Specifically, interviews with a CIO, as well as literature from the ITIL Official site and from the practitioner’s journals are consulted in order to determine whether the best practices contained in the ITIL framework may improve the management of information technology (IT) services, as well as assist in promoting the alignment of Business and the IT Function within the organization. A conceptual model is proposed which proposes a two-way relationship between IT and the provision of IT Services, with ITIL positioned as an intervening variable