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Drawing on the knowledge-based view, this study investigates how IT–business alignment influences business model design via organizational learning and examines the moderating role of data-driven culture in the relationship between IT–business alignment and business model design via organizational learning.

Using multi-respondent survey data collected from 597 Chinese firms, mediation and moderated mediation analyses were used to examine this study's hypotheses.

The mediation test results revealed organizational learning served as a mediator between IT–business alignment and two types of business model design (i.e. novelty- and efficiency-centered). In addition, data-driven culture strengthened the indirect effects of IT–business alignment on these two types of business model design via organizational learning.

This study extends current understandings of the relationship between IT–business alignment and business model design by revealing the mediating role of organizational learning and investigating its indirect effects under various degrees of data-driven culture. As such, it contributes to the literature on the business model and IT–business alignment and provides insights for managers seeking to achieve the expected business model design.

In the era of the digital economy, organizations are under much pressure to justify their information technology (IT) spending on digital transformation. Some organizations have thus implemented IT chargeback, an IT governance (ITG) mechanism, to clarify and allocate IT costs among various business units. While practitioners have stressed the importance of IT chargeback, there has been little theoretical effort that investigates its strategic effects and boundary conditions.

Synthesizing the ITG literature and the resource-based view (RBV), the authors develop a research model to examine if IT chargeback affects IT–business strategic alignment and, in turn, organizational performance and how human IT resources strengthen the impacts of IT chargeback. The authors designed a survey to collect data from 103 firms and tested the model using partial least squares (PLS).

The authors found that IT chargeback promoted strategic alignment and then organizational performance only for firms with business-competent chief information officers (CIOs), rather than IT-competent business executives.

This study enriches the ITG literature by exploring the strategic value of an IT cost governance mechanism (i.e. IT chargeback). This study further proposes and validates a measure of IT chargeback. Drawing on the RBV, this study quantitatively investigates the strategic impacts and boundary contingencies of IT chargeback. This study also advances the CIO literature by identifying the strategic leading role, instead of the traditional supporting role, of CIOs in modern organizations.

This study intends to reveal how to manage the dynamic process of information technology business (IT-business) strategic alignment; managing this alignment is an unknown yet critical issue that must be addressed by any firm trying to unleash the business value of their IT investments.

This study presents our case study of a healthcare organization after healthcare information systems (HIS) implementation and investigates the strategic alignment between the implemented HIS and the organizational strategy from a dynamic perspective.

Two different patterns of alignment (i.e. an IT-strategy–driven pattern and a business-strategy–driven pattern) are identified, and a process model of the IT-business strategic alignment is developed. Moreover, this study focuses on the social dimension of strategic alignment and examines the role of this dimension, which is critical and fundamental with respect to other dimensions, in achieving strategic alignment.

This paper makes important theoretical contributions to the understanding of strategic alignment by taking a dynamic view of alignment, identifying different patterns of alignment, emphasizing the role of social alignment and developing a comprehensive process model.

From a managerial perspective, managers should periodically scrutinize the IT-business alignment patterns of their organizations and develop dynamic capabilities for strategic alignment.

While most of the literature on the dynamics of strategic alignment have focused on confirming the dynamics of strategic alignment and identifying the factors that create dynamics in alignment, this study examines IT-business alignment as a continuous process over time, thus providing a novel perspective. Moreover, while the role of social alignment and its impact on downstream performance remain unclear in the current literature, this study incorporates the social dimension of alignment to investigate the role of this dimension in achieving IT-business strategic alignment.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the current discussion on strategic alignment of information technology and business (strategic alignment) by developing a model for conceptualizing how strategic alignment can be enabled through of IT flexibility and IT capability.

A questionnaire instrument was created to measure the constructs and it was assessed in a pretest and two pilot-tests. The main data set was collected from IT managers (or similar titles) of medium- and large-sized firms.

Strategic alignment seems to be moving closer to firms’ core activity in today’s business environment. The findings revealed that strategic alignment was significantly affected by four dimensions of IT flexibility and IT capability. Furthermore, the significant role of two dimensions of IT flexibility in IT capability was supported.

Single key informants were used for data collection that could be a potential limitation.

It seems likely that firms will benefit from the results to manage and control their scarce IT resources more effectively for aligning IT with business strategies, goals and needs.

Strategic alignment has become a more complex and unstructured phenomenon and many firms are still considering how to reconcile to it. Furthermore, the lack of empirical examination of IT flexibility and IT capability in relation to strategic alignment from important perspectives, and the lack of research of the dimensions of IT flexibility for supporting IT capability, determines the purpose of this study.

While big data creates business value, knowledge on how value is created remains limited and research is needed to discover big data’s value mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to explore value creation capabilities of big data through an alignment perspective.

The paper is based on a single case study of a service division of a large Danish wind turbine generator manufacturer based on 18 semi-structured interviews.

A strategic alignment framework comprising human, information technology, organization, performance, process and strategic practices are used as a basis to identify 15 types of alignment capabilities and their inter-dependent variables fostering the value creation of big data. The alignment framework is accompanied by seven propositions to obtain alignment of big data in service processes.

The study demonstrates empirical anchoring of how alignment capabilities affect a company’s ability to create value from big data as identified in a service supply chain.

Service supply chains and big data are complex matters. Therefore, understanding how alignment affects a company’s ability to create value of big data may help the company to overcome challenges of big data.

The study demonstrates how value from big data can be created following an alignment logic. By this, both critical and complementary alignment capabilities have been identified.

This paper aims to explore how the novel information technology (NIT) [1] affects three dimensions of sustainable supply chain performance (economic performance, environmental performance and social performance) and how two dimensions of IT alignment (IT infrastructure alignment and IT human resources alignment) mediate the relationship between them.

NIT is defined, the dimension of IT alignment is expanded, the theoretical hypotheses are proposed and are tested using survey data from 394 manufacturing enterprises using NIT in China.

The results indicate that NIT plays a positive role in improving sustainable supply chain performance, and IT alignment mediates the impact of NIT on sustainable supply chain performance.

This study highlights the impact of NIT on sustainable supply chain performance and demonstrates IT alignment as a mediator between them, it also provides a deeper understanding of how different dimensions of IT alignment affect sustainable supply chain performance

There are significant differences in terms of resources and expertise available between small and medium enterprises and large organisations. These differences may be significant for assessing and attaining alignment between IT (information technology) and business strategies. Thus this paper aims primarily to identify whether the differences between small, medium and large enterprises have an impact on the way they perceive strategic alignment.

Based on data collected from 104 participants, five attributes are ranked for each of the following alignment factors: communication, competency/value measurement, governance, partnership, architecture and scope, and skills. This paper reviews and compares their relevance according to organisational size (SMEs and large organisations) and planning integration strategies (independent, sequential and simultaneous).

The results from this survey suggest that, when ranking these factors, there are not significant differences among SME and large organisations. It was found, however, that the ranking of these factors has a positive correlation with the degree of IT/business planning integration applied in the organisation.

This study contributes to an understanding of the complex dynamic of aligning IT with business objectives and the implications for SMEs where few models have been tested. The results suggest that SMEs and large organisations perceived alignment in a similar way, however, there are significant differences in the way SMEs and large organisations implement their planning integrations strategies.

Although current studies in alignment have not explored in much detail the differences between large and small organisations most of the theories around alignment can be applied to small and medium organisations with more confidence. Additionally, the analysis strongly suggests that companies following a simultaneous planning integration can improve the chances to make better use of IT, and thus attain better levels of alignment.

This study contributes towards the study of alignment in SMEs, which is currently not very much explored. It also raises awareness about the importance of developing IT and business strategies together.

This study aims to test a model in which the effect of strategic information technology (IT)-business alignment on organizational agility is examined by the moderating influence of environmental uncertainty.

This research utilizes a matched-pair survey data collected from 300 IT and business executives working in various privately owned Indian financial enterprises, and structural equation modeling is used to examine the alignment–agility linkage.

The analysis demonstrates the positive effect of alignment on agility (studied as business process and market responsive agilities), and alignment is more effective on business process agility than market responsive agility. However, the moderation analysis reveals that in a highly uncertain environment, alignment has more effect on market responsive agility but not on business process agility.

Although previous studies (mostly conducted in the context of developed countries) have reported about the positive IT-business alignment and organizational agility linkage, the literature is silent regarding the influence of external contingent factors on this relationship from a developing country perspective. The authors have conceptualized alignment on the basis of strategic alignment maturity model and meticulously examined its relationship with both categories of agility. This research extends the alignment-agility theory and provides empirical support for this unique association from a developing country (i.e. India) perspective, and thereby, greatly contributes to the alignment literature.

Many thought leaders are promoting information technology (IT) governance and its supporting practices as an approach to improve business/IT alignment. This paper aims to further explore this assumed positive relationship between IT governance practices and business/IT alignment.

This paper explores the relationship between the use of IT governance practices and business/IT alignment, by creating a business/IT alignment maturity benchmark and qualitatively comparing the use of IT governance practices in the extreme cases.

The main conclusion of the research is that all extreme case organisations are leveraging a broad set of IT governance practices, and that IT governance practices need to obtain at least a maturity level 2 (on a scale of 5) to positively influence business/IT alignment. Also, a list of 11 key enabling IT governance practices is identified.

This research adheres to the process theory, implying a limited definition of prediction. An important opportunity for future research lies in the domain of complementary statistical correlation research.

This research identifies key IT governance practices that organisations can leverage to improve business/IT alignment.

This research contributes to new theory building in the IT governance and alignment domain and provides practitioners with insight on how to implement IT governance in their organisations.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML) offer opportunities for organizations to develop new or enhance existing capabilities. Despite the endless possibilities, organizations face operational challenges in harvesting the value of ML-based capabilities (MLbC), and current research has yet to explicate these challenges and theorize their remedies. To bridge the gap, this study explored the current practices to propose a systematic way of orchestrating MLbC development, which is an extension of ongoing digitalization of organizations.

Data were collected from Finland's Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (FAIA) and complemented by follow-up interviews with experts outside FAIA in Europe, China and the United States over four years. Data were analyzed through open coding, thematic analysis and cross-comparison to develop a comprehensive understanding of the MLbC development process.

The analysis identified the main components of MLbC development, its three phases (development, release and operation) and two major MLbC development challenges: Temporal Complexity and Context Sensitivity. The study then introduced Fostering Temporal Congruence and Cultivating Organizational Meta-learning as strategic practices addressing these challenges.

This study offers a better theoretical explanation for the MLbC development process beyond MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) and its hindrances. It also proposes a practical way to align ML-based applications with business needs while accounting for their structural limitations. Beyond the MLbC context, this study offers a strategic framework that can be adapted for different cases of digital transformation that include automation and augmentation of work.