Investigating the social dimension of alignment between it and business: focusing on communication and knowledge sharing

Abstract

Strategic alignment has been viewed as one of the main concerns of management and IT executives. Organizations have realized that in order to achieve competitive advantage, IT needs to be strategically aligned with business objectives. This is because business success has been found to be dependent on a company's ability to exploit the use of IT in their business processes. While the importance of alignment and the benefits that can result from it are not questioned, achieving and maintaining alignment is still a major concern facing organizations. Organizations have taken many different approaches to achieve alignment between IT and business. Reich & Benbasat (2000) have focused on two dimensions of alignment, the intellectual dimension and the social dimension. The intellectual dimension focuses on the strategies, structure and planning methodologies organizations use to achieve alignment. However the social dimension concentrates on the role of people in achieving alignment and minimal research has been conducted in this particular area. Reich & Benbasat (2000) have identified four factors that influence the social dimension of alignment. However the intention of this study is to investigate the effect of the two factors of communication and knowledge sharing on alignment in detail. Five IT companies were selected for this empirical case study. Two participants from each company were interviewed, the exception being one organization at which three participants took part in the research. One interviewee from each company represented the IT side and one interviewee represented the business side of their company. The findings of the research revealed that the consistency of communication and knowledge sharing leading to alignment between IT and business objectives are of a high level. However the extent to which they can lead to alignment is affected by other factors that could result in inhibiting or enhancing their ability to a seamless alignment outcome.