A Strategic Alignment Perspective of Public-Sector Organisations in Saudi Arabia in the Digital Transformation Age (Quantitative Study)

Public-sector organisations face several challenges in their adoption of digital transformation strategies to achieve strategic goals and objectives. The aim of this study was to assess the determinants of business value related to information technology projects in public-sector organisations from a business-information technology strategic alignment perspective. This study utilised a quantitative design drawing data from 198 surveys. The main findings showed a positive, significant, and impactful linkage between Information System (IS) Governance Mechanisms and Top Management characteristics. Both are essential antecedents of the intellectual dimension of Business-IT Strategic Alignment and the quality of IT Project Planning. The findings also showed a positive relationship between Business-IT Strategic Alignment and the quality of IT Project Planning, which fully mediates the impact of IS Governance Mechanisms and Top Management characteristics on Organisational Performance, Service Innovation, and Operational Excellence

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

La transformation digitale des administrations publiques: Revue systématique de littérature et agenda de recherche

Les publications scientifiques relatives à la transformation digitale des administrations publiques sont récentes, en pleine évolution et peu abondantes.  Cette actualité reflète l'engouement croissant de la communauté académique pour ce domaine de recherche, soutenu par les politiques gouvernementales en recherche et développement, en partenariat avec les universités. Ces politiques publiques visent à accompagner les administrations publiques dans leur transition vers le digital en adoptant de manière plus efficace les nouvelles technologies de l'information. L'objectif est d'offrir des services digitaux en temps réel, de haute qualité, d'améliorer la prestation des services publics, de renforcer leur efficacité et leur efficience, tout en atteignant des objectifs tels que la transparence, l'interopérabilité et la satisfaction des citoyens. Malgré l'ambiguïté persistante entourant le concept de la transformation digitale des administrations publiques, nous avons entrepris une revue systématique de la littérature dans le but de clarifier les différents aspects de cette problématique. Par conséquent, l'objectif principal de cet article est de procéder à une analyse méthodique de la littérature afin d'apporter des éclaircissements sur les multiples facettes de cette question

Challenges of strategy implementation in the Saudi non-oil and gas industry: a qualitative investigation

The expanding pace of economic turbulence and increasing complexity of managing large organisations present challenges for business leaders in both developed and developing countries’ economies. This is particularly so for those that have been significantly dependant on oil and gas such as Saudi Arabia (KSA) where there is now a pressing need to diversify due to price volatility and the increased adoption of renewable sources of energy. Given the need for oil-dependent economies to diversify, greater attention needs to be focused on the performance of their non-oil and gas sectors. Using KSA as a case study, this research aims to develop a framework to facilitate effective strategy implementation through an exploration of aspects that improve strategy execution in the non-oil and gas sector. After exploring the process of strategy implementation through use of the grounded theory method, data was collected from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with senior management. The result of strategy formulation and implementation analysis identified 26 factors that affect strategy implementation in the Saudi non-oil and gas industry. The most obvious factors are: effective leadership style, a unified view of benefits realisation management, prioritising work activities, employee involvement and ownership (especially talent), efficiency in the allocation of resources, transparency and traceability of monitoring and control, the Saudi macro and micro environment, and the degree of communicational formality and frequency. This research makes an important contribution through the creation of a new theoretical framework titled ‘SIMPLE’, which functions as a pre-strategy execution checklist tool to achieve implementation success. Implementation success has a greater chance of being achieved if organisations are considered holistically and that there is sufficient appreciation of the social and human aspects, the need for communication, the environmental and cultural setting, as well as the organisation’s readiness for strategy implementation

Learning from Intermediaries to Overcome Cognitive Related Barriers in the University-Industry Collaboration

Previous studies on university-industry collaboration have shown a number of different barriers that affect transferring knowledge through such a collaboration. From the cognitive dimension of the social capital theory perspective, this paper explores barriers to knowledge transfer activities through the collaboration between university and industry and how intermediaries contribute to mitigating these barriers. By applying the qualitative research method, a total of 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted, targeting academics and practitioners across the various universities, industries, and intermediary organisations in Saudi Arabia. A thematic analysis of the data was then employed using MAXQDA 2022 software. Based on the findings, this paper contributes to the extant university-industry collaboration literature by providing insights into critical challenges that can be addressed to improve collaborative inter-organisation relationships. Additionally, it can guide related partners in maintaining a successful collaboration

Development of a Taxonomy to be used by Business-IT Alignment Researchers

The nexus between Business and IT research is complex. Due to extended research over time, the context of business-IT alignment has resulted in many different conceptualisations that can be applied to ongoing research. It is challenging to select and adopt a suitable approach to study business-IT alignment across any given field due to the variability of the existing conceptualisations. This study reviews the existing literature to identify alignment conceptualisations and contributes to both theory and practice. Theoretically, through the uncovering of gaps in the literature a taxonomy has been developed which can be used as a guide to select an appropriate alignment lens for business-IT alignment studies. In practice, it is expected that this taxonomy will be beneficial for conceptualising the structure and philosophies underpinning future alignment studies. To validate the taxonomy, the paper presents a case study in healthcare applying the developed taxonomy to investigate alignment of big data in health

Exploring the Misalignment between Business and Information Technology on the Implementation of Balanced Scorecard: Case Study of State-Owned Telecommunication Companies in Indonesia

Many organisations around the world have faced misalignment in attaining the alignment between business and IT. The positive effect of alignment on overall company success has been focused on previous research. On the other hand, the misalignment in the implementation of a balanced scorecard was primarily unexplored. This study aimed at identifying and evaluating the factors that contribute to a misalignment of businesses and IT. The case study methodology is conducted in two state-owned telecommunication companies in Indonesia. The telecommunication industry’s selection as the case study is because of their nature closely related to technology development and implementation. Five semi-structured interviews, field notes and business records are used to produce the data, which have been thematically analysed and further follow by cross-case analysis to compare the thematic analysis result from each company. This study has resulted in 12 factors of misalignment between business and IT that can inhibit achieving alignment in implementing a balanced scorecard. The main findings showed that human factors, enterprise architecture, and IT project implementation factors could be three main source themes that can potentially contribute to misalignment. The findings may allow researchers to devise frameworks for how misalignments can be minimised to align business and IT better. This finding also useful in practice for companies that are seeking to achieve business-IT alignment by focusing on human factors, enterprise architecture factors, and IT project implementation factors

Prioritising IT Applications’ Readiness using Balanced Scorecards in Saudi Arabia

Defining a realistic strategy, that directs employees to achieve the organisation's strategic goals, is an important step towards achieving an organisation's objectives. Balanced Scorecards are one of the most useful tools and management systems to measure an organisation's performance against defined targets. In many instances the use of Information Technology within the organisation is essential to achieve a satisfying degree of the strategic objectives due to the IT readiness within the organisation. IT readiness of an organisation can be defined as the degree of the software applications can provide the desired functionality and operations required by departments and sections within the organisation in order to achieve the strategic goals. This research shows how Balanced Scorecards can be used to identify and priorities process requirements for IT readiness to align within organisation business strategy. Four main research questions were formulated here: how to determine projects priorities in adopting targets and weight and importance for each application, how algorithms and metrics used to measure the importance of needed applications can be developed and then how to assess their readiness. Finally, what are the methodologies used to develop a framework to priorities applications in terms of their readiness to achieve the strategic objectives. The framework used to priorities applications have been developed and tested in this research. This implementation was based on a mathematical model used to calculate the importance and the readiness of each application in public organisation in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, a comparison between the percentages of the expected achieved targets with prioritizing application readiness and the current achievements was provided

A systematic literature review on business-IT misalignment research

There has been a large body of research on strategic alignment between business and information technology, which has also been summarised in several literature reviews. All of these studies describe that business-IT alignment has remained a focal point among business and IT leaders. However, little is known about a specific perspective, namely, on business-IT misalignment, on which, although some analytical works have been carried out over the last twenty years, no literature review has been summarised. The purpose of this article is to display and analyze relevant literature regarding business-IT misalignment and map the influential issues by conducting a systematic literature review. This study collected in sum 642 papers published from the Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Finally, 62 articles were selected for the systematic review. The study examined eight research questions for business-IT misalignment derived from recent, high-impact business-IT alignment literature reviews. Results are analyzed qualitatively to find a better understanding of the current body of knowledge in business-IT misalignment and to provide a research agenda