Understanding and Classifying Information System Alignment Approaches

Abstract

Today, companies are immersed in extremely competitive world-wide markets that change continuously. Thus, companies have to evolve introducing strategic and structural changes as a response to the external forces of the environment. This implies to consider the information system (IS) alignment from a global point of view integrating the classical “internal” strategic alignment with two other levels: the alignments with the environment and with uncertain evolutions. Approaches that support and operationalise IS alignment are numerous but remain fuzzy towards the fullfilled alignment level. Therefore, it is proposed to build an analysis framework, based on theoretical alignment concepts, in order to analyse them towards this feature. It is composed of four elements and corresponding attributes detailing each level of alignment. This framework is applied to nine current alignment approaches in order to get a structured picture of the research in the domain. The corresponding analysis emphasises possible new work perspectives.

• IS alignment
• alignment approach
• information system
• analysis framework