Business-IT Alignment in the Era of Digital Transformation: Quo Vadis?

For the last four decades, the alignment of business and IT strategies also referred to as business-IT alignment (BITA), has been recognised as one of the top concerns for leaders. The current digital transformation journey undertaken by most organisations, however, triggered a new approach to planning and executing business and IT strategies as well as pursuing BITA. A systematic literature review is conducted to capture the paradigmatic shift in research and practice. A total of 94 articles published between 2014 and 2018 were identified searching through databases known to index reputable IS journals and conference proceedings. The analysis of the review revealed the continued conceptual debate on BITA construct as well as new research topics. The significance of digital strategy, enterprise architecture models, as well as intelligent IT systems to enable elicitation, implementation and assessment of activities enabling BITA are garnering the attention of researchers. Potential research directions are presented

Tomorrow is Another Day: Information Systems Governance

In many organizations, the Chief Information Officer is considered to preside over a separate function, providing a service to the business. Discussions about governance are confined to properties of this service, e.g. through a service level agreement. Members of the CIO’s staff are often seen as technical experts possessing esoteric skills desired but not understood by other staff. Many researchers have observed a need for businesses to avoid such fragmentation to reap the full benefits of investment in ICT’s. However, this research is itself often fragmented – focusing sometimes on software, sometimes on architectures. This paper argues that IS governance should form an integral part of strategic business management. We advocate a shift of perspective in management of IS, from leadership to facilitation. People at all levels require empowerment and support to develop their own IS ‘capability’; to make the best use of available technologies and information in context. There is evidence to show that input from a wider community within organizations can lead to an improved realization of value from information technology. The paper will discuss methods which can provide appropriate support for individuals to achieve this

A conceptual framework for capability sourcing modeling

Companies need to acquire the right capabilities from the right source, and the right shore, at the right cost to improve their competitive position. Capability sourcing is an organizing process to gain access to best-in-class capabilities for all activities in a firm's value chain to ensure long-term competitive advantage. Capability sourcing modeling is a technique that helps investigating sourcing alternative solutions to facilitate strategic sourcing decision making. Our position is applying conceptual models as intermediate artifacts which are schematic descriptions of sourcing alternatives based on organization's capabilities. The contribution of this paper is introducing a conceptual framework in the form of five views (to organize all perspectives) and a conceptualisation (to formulate a language) for capability sourcing modelling

The creation of business architecture heat maps to support strategy-aligned organizational decisions

The realization of strategic alignment within the business architecture has become increasingly important for companies. Indeed, it facilitates business-IT alignment as a well-designed business architecture helps both to identify the appropriate requirements for IT systems and to discover new business opportunities that can be realized by IT. However, there is a lack of alignment techniques that support organizational (re) design decisions during the operation phase as the actual performance of business architecture elements is neglected. Capability heat maps provide a useful starting point in this respect as they focus on the creation of a hierarchy of prioritized capabilities, which are characterized by a performance measure. In this paper, these techniques will be extended to support strategy-aligned decisions within the business architecture. The identification of the relevant business architecture elements is based on state-of-the-art enterprise modelling languages, which enable the development of enterprise models on distinct layers of the business architecture. Strategic alignment between these elements will be realized by using prioritization according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), while performance measurement will enable the creation of a proper decision support system. Afterwards, the proposed heat map will be applied on a case example to illustrate its potential use. This results in the completion of a first build-and-evaluate loop within the Design Science methodology

Defining the gap between research and practice in public relations programme evaluation - towards a new research agenda

The current situation in public relations programme evaluation is neatly summarized by McCoy who commented that 'probably the most common buzzwords in public relations in the last ten years have been evaluation and accountability' (McCoy 2005, 3). This paper examines the academic and practitioner-based literature and research on programme evaluation and it detects different priorities and approaches that may partly explain why the debate on acceptable and agreed evaluation methods continues. It analyses those differences and proposes a research agenda to bridge the gap and move the debate forward

Supply Chain Management Best Practices In Project Based Business Environment

The ever-growing competition in industrialized world has driven organizations to evaluate properly the possibilities to response the competition and seeking ways to differ from the other actors. Noting the high influence of supply chain management activities to the overall performance of the enterprise, has led to the re-structuring of procurement organizations and aiming towards more strategic approach to reach competitive advantage. This thesis-research was done as an assignment for Ruukki Building Systems Oy, by focusing to investigate best practices of supply chain management in four different sub-areas called; organization design, supply base management, make or buy and performance measurement. The aim is to benchmark best-in-class organizations and their actions in defined sub-areas. The research was conducted by using a qualitative method. The data was gathered by interviewing nine best-in-class organizations originated in Sweden and Finland. The empirical part was conducted as a benchmarking analysis based on the data gathered from the interviews. Due to the nature of the analysis, some assumptions and suppositions were made to be able to conduct conclusion. All terms and frameworks used in the research have been noted earlier in literature. Results prove that enterprises have been focusing highly to find balance internally in organizations to serve peer functions with strong effort, by achieving cost savings and thereby profitability. The strategic viewpoint of studied actions in field of supply chain management has noted significantly and driven to build up a framework to reach efficient and effective supply base which is measurable in terms of strategic alignment of corporate targets.Alati kiristyvä kilpailu teollistuneessa maailmassa on ajanut organisaatiot etsimään ja arvioimaan tarkasti mahdollisia keinoja vastata kilpailuun sekä erottautumaan muista toimijoista markkinoilla. Toimitusketjun hallintaan liittyvien tekijöiden vaikutus yrityksen kokonaisvaltaiseen tehokkuuteen, on ajanut yritykset järjestämään organisaatiota uudelleen ja tavoittelemaan strategisempaa lähestymistapaa hankintatoimien suorittamiseen kilpailukyvyn näkökulmasta. Tämä tutkimus tehtiin toimeksiantona Ruukki Building Systems Oy:lle. Työn tavoitteena oli vertailla menestyvien yritysten toimitusketjunhallintaan liittyviä käytänteitä, neljällä eri osa-alueella: hankinnan organisoituminen, toimittajapohjanhallinta, ulkoistaminen sekä mittaaminen ja raportointi. Työ toteutettiin laadullisena tutkimuksena. Empiirinen aineisto kerättiin haastattelemalla yhdeksää valittujen yritysten hankintajohtajaa Suomessa sekä Ruotsissa. Empiirinen osio suoritettiin vertailuanalyysina, jonka avulla pyrittiin löytämään parhaita käytänteitä toimitusketjunhallintaa projektiympäristössä. Joitain oletuksia ja tulkintoja tehtiin analyysin toteuttamiseksi. Kaikki termit ja mallit, joita tutkimuksessa käsitellään, on esitetty aiemmissa tutkimuksissa. Tulokset osoittavat, että yritykset ovat pyrkineet tasapainottamaan organisaation ja sen rakenteen palvellakseen tehokkaasti rinnakkaisfunktioita, saavuttaakseen kustannussäästöjä ja siten kannattavuutta. Strateginen näkökulma tutkituilla osa-alueilla on nähty kriittisenä tekijänä, jotta pystyttäisiin rakentamaan viitekehys, jota pystytään johtamaan tehokkaasti sekä mittaamaan organisaation strategisten tavoitteiden saavuttamiseksi