The Influence of Organizational Politics on Business-IT Alignment

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Ilkka Ritola ◽  
Rokas Siugzda ◽  
Lazar Rusu
Keyword(s):  
Research Study ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Maturity Model ◽  
Large Organization ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
Business It Alignment ◽  
Alignment Maturity ◽  
It Skills

Business-IT alignment continues to remain a top management concern. Regardless of ample research, achieving and sustaining business-IT alignment remains challenging to organization's management. To this day, the influence of organizational politics remains unstudied in the light of business-IT alignment. By performing a case study in a large organization in Sweden, the authors present and discuss how organizational politics influences business-IT alignment from the viewpoint of practitioners. They find that organizational politics has a negative influence on communications, partnering, IT governance, IT scope, and business and IT skills of the Strategic Alignment Maturity model. Furthermore, the authors identified several root causes for organizational politics in the business-IT alignment context, not addressed by the commonly used business-IT alignment constructs. The findings of this research study are useful to business and IT practitioners for achieving and sustaining business-IT alignment in their organizations considering the influence of organizational politics.

scholarly journals Assessing Business-IT Alignment Maturity at a Colombian University

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Miguel Eduardo Torres-Moreno ◽  
Jairo Hernán Aponte-Melo
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Success Factor ◽  
Maturity Model ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
It Department ◽  
Business It Alignment ◽  
Alignment Maturity ◽  
Almost All

Over the last decades, the role of the IT department within an organization has gradually gained importance. Technology has permeated all areas within organizations and nowadays is the cornerstone of almost all business processes. Thus, business-IT alignment (BITA) is considered an essential success factor for almost any organization. Consequently, the evaluation and improvement of this alignment have been a growing concern among researchers and organizations. This study assessed the BITA maturity in a Colombian university, applying Luftman’s SAM (Strategic Alignment Maturity) model. The conducted assessment collected, analyzed, and contrasted perceptions of business and IT personnel. Similarly, we investigated the personnel’s perceptions at the strategic, functional, and operational levels regarding the SAM factors. Furthermore, we compared our results with other BITA assessments in educational institutions, Latin American organizations, and worldwide results. Finally, we drew some conclusions that can be useful for practitioners who seek to apply Luftman’s assessment.

Explorative Study on the Influence of National Cultures on Business/IT Alignment Maturity

2012 ◽  
pp. 102-122
Author(s):  
A. J. Gilbert Silvius ◽  
Steven De Haes ◽  
Wim Van Grembergen
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Success Factor ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
Business It Alignment ◽  
Alignment Maturity ◽  
It Executives ◽  
Area Of Concern

A key success factor for a successful company in a dynamic environment is effective and efficient information technology (IT) supporting business strategies and processes. Organizations that successfully align their business strategy and their IT strategy outperform their non-aligned peers (Chan et al., 1997). In recent surveys IT executives consistently name IT to Business alignment their top-concern. The alignment between business needs and IT capabilities is therefore still a prominent area of concern. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the alignment challenge by exploring the impact of (national) cultures on the maturity of business / IT alignment (BIA).The paper relies on Hofstede’s framework of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1980) to understand the concept of national culture. After a brief introduction on BIA and Luftman’s framework for measuring BIA maturity (Luftman, 2000), the authors analyze the influence of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on the variables of BIA maturity. This conceptual exercise is than tested in a small-scale empirical exploration by comparing BIA maturity scores of Belgium and Dutch financial institutions. The results support a potential effect of national cultures on BIA maturity, especially in ‘governance maturity’ and ‘skills maturity’, but not all expected results are confirmed.

Barriers in Business-IT Alignment in a Large Company in Manufacturing Area

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Fadi Shammas ◽  
Guanjie Meng ◽  
Lazar Rusu
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Large Company ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
The Status ◽  
Business It Alignment

Business-IT alignment (BITA) continues to be a top management concern for the last ten years. Moreover, organizations mangers are still looking to understand the barriers between the status of alignment and misalignment. The barriers in BITA differ from a business area to another and particularly the authors have not found any research studies concerning the barriers in BITA in the manufacturing area in Sweden. Therefore, the research question is: What are the strategic, tactical, and operational barriers in business-IT alignment in a large company in manufacturing area? The research strategy is case study, and the data was collected through semi-structured interviews and also from company's internal documents and it was analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings of this study are a number of thirty barriers in BITA that includes six new barriers in BITA at operational, tactical and strategic level.

scholarly journals Mission Alignment and Operationalization: The Case of the United World Colleges

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Angel B Perez
Keyword(s):  
Research Study ◽  
International Schools ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Residential Life ◽  
Large Organization ◽  
Mission Alignment ◽  
Curricular Choice ◽  
Allocation Decisions ◽  
Case Study Methods

This research study explored how a large, complex global educational organization operationalizes its mission and socializes its constituents to support its mission and values. The study’s unit of analysis was the United World Colleges (UWC), a group of complex international schools whose multi-campus and multinational structure shares a values-driven and activist-oriented mission. With an interest in exploring causation, the researcher employed case study methods to understand how this large organization brings its mission to life on a daily basis.Extensive interviews, observations and document analysis at five units of the organization led to eight themes consistent across all data collected. The research study revealed that the following factors play a significant role in mission operationalization and alignment: (1) The entrance and exit strategy for members of the organization; (2) selection of the organization’s members; (3) curricular choice and teaching methods; (4) use and structure of the physical space; (5) programming; (6) residential life; (7) reflection; and (8) simplicity and tangibility of the mission statement.The study has implications for international schools and organizations keen to create strategic alignment between their mission and daily operations. The findings in the study are generalizable and could inform international organizations in their attempt to implement best practices and make resource allocation decisions to maintain mission fidelity.

Reviewing Business-IT Alignment Instruments Under SAM Dimensions

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Belfo ◽  
Rui Dinis Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Strategic Alignment ◽  
Future Research ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Good Starting Point ◽  
Business It Alignment ◽  
Alignment Maturity ◽  
It Executives ◽  
Validated Instrument

Business-IT alignment has been on the top of the concerns of IT executives for many years and how to assess it has been under research. Among many proposals, one of the best known and cited in the literature, showing some relevant empirical work, is the Luftman’s Strategic Alignment Maturity (SAM) categories assessment. Taking it as a framework, seven other proposals are examined using SAM categories as dimensions of business-IT alignment: communications, competency/value measurements, governance, partnership, technology scope and skills. Except for one proposal revealing a tactical level approach, this review shows that business-IT alignment assessment has been studied essentially at the strategic level. Among the examined dimensions across the several proposals, governance is the best covered one while the human resource skills dimension is considerably neglected. Having still room for improvements, either in the governance or the technology scope dimensions, the SAM assessment seems a well balanced instrument. The empirical work already found on SAM provides a good starting point to get an acceptable validated instrument. However, if in terms of content validity, SAM is one of the most promising instruments, there is still much work to do on what concerns its operationalization. Future research should strive for a rigorous, strong instrument on every component of construct validity, namely, the convergent, discriminant and nomological components.

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