Mixed results in strategic IT alignment research: a synthesis and empirical study

Abstract

The alignment of business strategy and IT has been a top managerial concern for decades. Yet despite much investigation, the effect of strategic IT alignment on organizational performance remains unclear, with mixed results reported in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of mixed findings in IT alignment research. We first examine inconsistent findings reported in two streams of alignment research: the traditional firm-level IT alignment literature and the emerging literature into process-level IT alignment. We then empirically investigate whether firm- and process-level conceptualizations of IT alignment lead to different conclusions about the effect of alignment on performance. Using data from a survey of 120 firms, we show that firm-level IT alignment and process-level IT alignment yield different conclusions when testing the same theory under the same conditions. We also show that differences in firms’ strategic orientations can help explain these results. This research provides evidence that firm- and process-level conceptualizations of IT alignment are not interchangeable and that the choice of conceptualization can mean the difference between accepting and rejecting a theory.

Keywords:

• IT alignment
• profile deviation
• construct conceptualization
• mixed results
• strategic orientation
• performance

Associate Editor: Jason Thatcher

Editor: Frantz Rowe

Associate Editor: Jason Thatcher

Editor: Frantz Rowe

Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (DP1096429 and LP120100422). The author thanks the Editor, Frantz Rowe, the Senior Editor, and the reviewers for their many helpful comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Magno Queiroz

About the author

Magno Queiroz is an Assistant Professor in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. His research papers have been published or are forthcoming in leading journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the European Journal of Information Systems, and the Journal of Information Technology. He received his Ph.D from University of Wollongong, Australia. Prior to joining Utah State University, he was a faculty member at the University of Technology Sydney.