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The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for evaluating business‐IT alignment. Specifically, the authors emphasize internal business‐IT alignment between business and IS groups, which is a typical setting in recent boundary‐less, networked business environments.

Based on the previous studies, a socio‐technical approach was developed to explain how the functional integration in the business‐IT alignment process could be accomplished in collaborative environments. The study investigates the relationship among social alignment, technical alignment, IS effectiveness, and business performance.

The results indicated that alignment between business and IS groups increased IS effectiveness and business performance. Business‐IT alignment resulting from socio‐technical arrangements in firms' infrastructure has positive impacts on business performance.

This study is limited by control issues in terms of the impact of the confounding variables on business performance. Future studies need to validate the research model across industries. The study results imply that business‐IT alignment is a multidimensional concept that includes social and technical activities explaining the way people and information technology institutionalize business value.

By establishing a socio‐technical framework of business‐IT alignment, this study proposes a conceptual framework for business‐IT alignment that accounts for not only improved technical performance, but also improved human performance as well. This study emphasizes the importance of addressing internal socio‐technical collaboration in modern business environments.

Though prior studies have attempted to explore the various effects of managing information technology (IT) investment on firm performance, the mechanism through which management of IT impact on firm performance rests less clear. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of managing IT and business-IT alignment on firm performance.

Drawing on the resource-based theory and process theory, this study examines how managing IT impacts business-IT alignment and firm performance. The primary survey of 182 responses from IT and business managers from Sri Lanka was empirically examined.

The findings reveal that managing IT has a positive and strong impact on business-IT alignment and firm performance. Further, business-IT alignment partially mediates between managing IT investment and firm performance relationships.

Today, businesses have invested a massive amount of money in IT investment, and the return on this investment is always a serious concern for managers and industry practitioners. This study finding proposes meaningful insights on managing IT, business-IT alignment and firm performance.

This study opens up the black box on the above nomological linkage and contributes to the literature by extending the theoretical lenses while suggesting insightful and practical implications.

This paper aims to present a dynamic model based on casual relationships among the most important effective factors on business–IT alignment in Agile businesses by using system dynamics modeling approach.

To study the most important factors on agility and alignment, the data were collected by questionnaires filled by 201 experts and were analyzed by SPSS and PLS. Casual relationships among studied factors and efficiency coefficients of each factor were identified by fuzzy DEMATEL technique and analyzed by MATLAB and EXCELL. Finally, the dynamic model was plotted by VENSIM.

According to the results, only “learning IT capabilities” are the most important casual factor that has the highest influence on the other factors. “Business responding capabilities” take the highest effect from the system, and “business sensing capabilities” are in the next rank.

This study underpins effective IT deployment toward developing efficient IT capabilities to gain greater agility.

The dynamic capabilities view (DCV) has emerged as an influential theoretical and management framework in modern IS and agility researches. In this regard, we propose a conceptualization of dynamic capabilities in the form of an alignment model. Based on the dynamic capabilities, and on the alignment perspectives found in Henderson and Venkatraman’s seminal model, IT alignment is modeled as a process of reconfiguration of the firm’s IT and organizational resources, competencies and capabilities.

Small and mid‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are facing challenges in an increasingly fierce environment. This paper aims to explore the promise of information systems (IS) in enhancing the survival and competitiveness of SMEs in a dynamic environment. To address this issue, the paper draws upon the dynamic capability theory and develops a research model of IS‐enabled dynamic capabilities to examine the role of IS competence for enhancing SMEs dynamic capabilities in a competitive business environment.

An empirical study is conducted by using survey data from senior managers of 120 SMEs in China.

The analytic outcomes support the research model and confirm that IS competence significantly contributes to SMEs' dynamic capabilities for gaining competitive advantage.

This paper contributes to the literature on IS impact on dynamic capabilities of SMEs by incorporating IS competences into a research model of IS‐enabled dynamic capabilities and articulating the relationships between IS competences and dynamic capabilities of SMEs in a changing business environment. The research findings enrich dynamic capabilities theory by justifying IS as an enabling antecedent for organizational capability development. The findings may empirically convince SMEs owners and management to effectively invest in and deploy IS for enhancing SMEs' dynamic capabilities and performance.

A capability‐building perspective is used to examine how IS can leverage SMEs' capabilities to enhance their competitive advantage in a dynamic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach for assessing the status of alignment between organizations and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems—more friendly and quantitatively.

An issue-based ERP assessment model is invented based on thorough literature review and empirical data from three Japanese companies. A modified Cartesian coordinate system is adopted to link the alignment criteria and the system maintenance activities.

The findings prove the feasibility of the model and reveal the variation of ERP alignment in a visualized way. It is also indicated that the utilization of the issue-based ERP assessment model is a more convenient method to help the organizations to pinpoint the status of the ERP alignment.

This is the first approach to measuring the business–information technology alignment visually. One major implication of this research is to provide an easy assessment method which may encourage organizations to do evaluations regularly. The information accumulated by regular assessment can further pinpoint the perfect time to make decisions and provide essential evidence for decision makings, such as when to expand or retire the current system. From the academic perspective, this model provides a new approach to evaluating the assimilation of organizations and ERP systems.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of the relationship management maturity model (RMMM), the output of an initiative aimed at bridging the gap between business units and the IT organisation. It does this through improving and assessing knowledge sharing between business and IT staff in Finco, a large financial services organisation.

The objectives were achieved by undertaking ethnographic research with the relationship managers (RMs) as they carried out their activities, and developing the RMMM by visualizing the development of a community of practice (CoP) between business and IT.

The RMMM demonstrates a learning mechanism to bridge the business/IT gap through an interpretive approach to knowledge sharing by defining knowledge sharing processes between business and IT and defining the tasks of the relationship managers as facilitators of knowledge sharing.

More research is necessary to determine whether the RMMM is a useful tool on which Finco can base the development of RM over the next few years.

The RMMM acts as a practical knowledge management tool, and will act as a future reference for the RMs as they attempt to further develop the business/IT relationship.

The findings provide an initial endorsement of the knowledge sharing perspective to understand the business/IT relationship. Also, the RMMM can be used to identify problematic issues and develop processes to address them.

Motivated by the increasing role of information technology (IT) in today’s organizations, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between business and IT executives in order to improve the organizational performance of the different aspects of IT technology and related systems. In the process, special attention is given to drivers which facilitate the cooperation between the parties involved.

This survey-based research utilizes structural equation modeling methodology to uncover the relevant variables pertaining to the promotion of a positive social and strategic context needed to increase the effectiveness of organizational IT facets.

The effectiveness of IT in modern organizations is contingent on a social alignment, business – IT alignment, strategic consistency, and common vision among the people who manage the IT function and those who need the organization.

This study is based on a sample of Portuguese manufacturing organizations. Therefore, findings and conclusions should be interpreted accordingly. In this context, future research in other organizational cultural settings is called for in order to refine and validate the results of this study.

The role of establishing an organizational culture which stresses the common goal and mutual trust and cooperation in creating effective IT organizational utilization is underscored. As such, business executives are encouraged to exercise their leadership skills in order to create an organizational strategy which aligns IT capabilities and investments with the competitive strategy of the organization. In this context, creating an organizational culture which promotes business – IT alignment in a healthy social context is necessary.

The issues and concerns addressed in this study should bridge the gap between business and IT executives. In the process, this study facilitates and encourages the effective utilization of the different facets of IT technology as they better serve the people of the organization. This advances the cost and practice of the strategic organizational role of IT investments.

Strategic alignment is a theory-based state that is considered as crucial for organizations in order to realize performance gains from information technology (IT) investments and deployments. Within the domain of purchasing and supply chain management there has been a growing interest on how purchasing strategy can be effectively aligned with IT and what conditions facilitate this state. The purpose of this paper is to investigate complex causal relationships of contingency elements that are key in enabling the “fit” between purchasing strategy and IT.

The paper employs a configuration theory approach and propose that purchasing alignment is dependent upon patterns of multiple contingencies. In adherence with contingency theory, the authors group these elements as relating to strategic orientation, organizational factors, and purchasing decisions. On a sample of 172 international companies the authors then apply the novel methodology of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The paper empirically demonstrates that depending on the strategic orientation that a company follows, there are alternative combinations of elements that lead to high purchasing alignment. For companies following an operational excellence strategic orientation, a high contract binding scheme, or a small firm size facilitates purchasing alignment. Enabling elements for product leadership companies include a decentralized purchasing structure, a broad supplier base, and a large firm size. Purchasing alignment for customer intimacy companies is supported by a centralized purchasing structure, loose contract binding, and a large supplier base.

The findings of this study suggest that practitioners aiming to attain a state of purchasing alignment should consider a number of contingency elements in the process. The paper shows that there is equifinality in the configurations that lead to purchasing alignment. This means that attaining purchasing alignment is dependent upon various clusters of contingency elements which must be taken into account when formulating a purchasing strategy.

In contrast with past studies examining purchasing alignment as a result of the isolated impact of several antecedents, we applied a configuration theory approach to demonstrate that it is facilitated by the combined impact of a set of cause-effect relationships. In cases were non-linear and synergistic relationships exist between independent variables, this type of research may be a viable alternative.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the current situation and the future improvement for IT governance and controls in developing country like Thailand.

Thai universities were selected and used as subjects for capturing the perception of IT executives on IT governance performance measures. In the first step, a global IT governance perspective was drawn from the literature review. In the second step, the important-performance analysis was applied to the metrics of IT governance balanced scorecard with collected survey data from 64 IT executives.

From a global perspective, the critical points that need to be concerned before implementing IT governance have been illustrated. From a regional perspective, the paper generated the strategic IT governance guidance for Thai universities.

This paper is beneficial for chief information officers, executive managers, IT managers, and academics. They will gain more knowledge and understanding about the mixed method of using metrics in IT governance balanced scorecard and importance-performance analysis in order to identify the current situation of IT governance and controls in their organizations. Additionally, the practical idea with this method can be applied to draw IT governance strategy in their contexts.

This paper specifies the critical points and directions of IT governance for Thai universities. The analysis covers global and regional viewpoints. This paper also provides the method for applying IT governance balanced scorecard metrics and importance-performance analysis to contribute IT governance strategy.

Information technology (IT) governance (ITG) is a complex concept that researchers are still exploring in many dimensions. The literature in this area has grown at a fast pace. It required a review article to make sense of the growing body of literature. This study aims to provide a comprehensive view of ITG for understanding this phenomenon.

The framework of systematicity and transparency is used to search, select and report relevant articles. This study synthesized the identified pool of articles by using thematic analysis, wherein each article was attached to various identified categories.

This study presents a comprehensive overview of the ITG literature space, including themes and subthemes. It highlights future research avenues and identifies gaps in the ITG area.

Information system researchers and senior practitioners can use this literature review to overview the up-to-date ITG literature. It can also be helpful for non-information system researchers who intend to conduct multi-disciplinary research.

This research looks at the ITG literature space by considering up-to-date literature and a fresh perspective.