Toward CNO Characteristics to Support Business/IT-Alignment

2007

The goal of the BUSITAL workshop series is to provide a forum in which leading researchers and practitioners from around the world can discuss and advance the state-of-the-art research and practice in business/IT alignment. The specific goal of BUSITAL'07 is to investigate how well established and emerging conceptual modeling methods, techniques, and tools fit in solutions to confront the challenge of maintaining mutual alignment between business needs and IT assets.

Our research addresses one of the most conspicuous and enduring issues facing IT practitioners: how to align a firm's IT resources with its business needs. Past work in this area has been largely atheoretical and sometimes inconsistent. We seek to provide an internally consistent explanation of how organizations achieve alignment and thereby improve business performance. Our work differs from past work in that we view IT alignment as a dynamic process, drawing on the lenses of three of the most promising theories of IT alignment over the past decade: institutional theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and complexity theory. Our study seeks to contribute by conducting the first multi-theoretic study of how IT alignment evolves, providing the first comparison of institutional theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and complexity theory, and using a novel methodology that combines dual-case methods with simulations.

Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Electronic commerce - ICEC '08, 2008

In this paper we present a framework and methodology for aligning the business strategy and IT/IS for an organization offering an e-service in a multi-organizational setting. We explore three perspectives on the e-service to be offered: 1) The business strategy perspective, in terms of the organization's strategic position; 2) The value creation perspective, in terms of a networked value constellation enabling value creation; 3) The IT/IS perspective, in terms of an IT architecture enabling the provision of the e-service. We explore these three perspective and modify them, until we find a situation in which 1) the designed IT architecture enables the provision of the e-service and can be implemented in a profitable way by the networked value constellation, and 2) the enterprise under study is positioned in the networked value constellation such that the enterprise can execute its business strategy. We have tested our approach on a starting enterprise offering a mobile e-service.

Requirements Engineering, 2011

In this paper, we introduce e 3 alignment for inter-organizational business-ICT alignment. With the e 3 alignment framework, we create alignment between organizations operating in an agile networked value constellation-which is a set of organizations who jointly satisfy a customer need-by (1) focusing on the interaction between the organizations in the constellation, (2) considering interaction from four different perspectives, and (3) utilizing conceptual modeling techniques to analyze and create alignment within and between the perspectives. By creating inter-organizational business-ICT alignment between the actors in the constellation, e 3 alignment ultimately contributes to a sustainable and profitable constellation. To actually create alignment, e 3 alignment iteratively takes three specific steps: (1) identification of alignment issues, (2) solution design, and (3) impact analysis. We illustrate our approach with cases from the Dutch aviation industry, Spanish electricity industry, and Dutch telecom industry.

Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2006

There is a growing recognition among alignment researchers and IT professionals that "one size does not fit all." In this article, we provide an important extension of alignment research that shows three profiles linking IT to different business objectives. We address the need to identify the appropriate types of IT alignment by using a multi-method study including interviews and cases. Two dimensions define the three alignment profiles: internal IT-business integration and external market engagement. The technical resource profile calls for low levels of IT-business integration and IT-market engagement. The business enabler profile deploys IT in some business processes and begins engaging IT with customers and suppliers. The strategic weapon profile uses IT to mobilize and extend the enterprise, which requires extensive IT deployment, both internally and externally. Each profile differs in strategies, criteria, capabilities, and mental models. Importantly, IT decision-makers should not adopt stage-model thinking which assumes that technical resource profiles naturally progress up the chain. Rather, successful use of IT requires specifying the requisite alignment profile as an initial design decision so that appropriate levels of resource allocation and management involvement occur.

2021

Business IT alignment has consistently been ranked at the top of the most important topics from the perspective of business executives. Over the years, many models and IT management frameworks have been proposed to address this issue. The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive understanding of business IT alignment phenomena based on the life experiences of IT leaders working in FMCG companies based in the UK. To achieve the goal of the study, a descriptive phenomenological method was employed. Live experiences of eleven participants from FMCG companies were used as the primary source of data. Phenomenological analysis of the data obtained from interviews revealed twenty-two subthemes grouped into four main themes. Four main themes identified during the study are leading topics, IT trends, IT management frameworks influencing business IT alignment, and future improvement. The leading topics theme gathers current most important areas being discussed between senior IT and business leaders. The IT trend's theme points to all technological trends that draw the attention of companies. In particular, three categories were discovered: technologies to automate and optimize, digital technologies, and disruptive technologies. The IT management framework theme tackles all frameworks contributing to business IT alignment. The logical chain of sequence could be observed due to the speed of changes and customers moving to online channels (leading topics), and because digital technologies are spreading (IT trends) supported by organizational changes (IT management frameworks). The last theme aggregates recommendations for improvement in business IT alignment based on participants' suggestions.

2000

This paper discusses IT-enabled collaboration of business units (Business Networking) on the business process level. It's goal is to develop a model which helps companies in the "networked economy" to design and manage their cross-company business processes. We elaborate an approach which combines findings of network theory and business process re-engineering using results of coordination theory. To reduce complexity, we split the networking problem into five coordination areas. We find that describing business networks with the aid of coordination areas allows a networked enterprise to consistently orient itself towards the processes of its partners, in particular those of its customers and suppliers. The model of the networked enterprise may serve as a framework for the Business Networking discussion on the IT-level.

… Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 2010

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2009

The focus of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive model for assessing and improving maturity of business-IT alignment (B-ITa) in collaborative networked organizations (CNOs): the ICoNOs MM. This two dimensional maturity model (MM) addresses five levels of maturity as well as four domains to which these levels apply: partnering structure, information system (IS) architecture, process architecture and coordination. The model can be used to benchmark and support continuous improvement of B-ITa process areas in CNOs.

Enterprise architecture has attracted the attention of information systems (IS) academics as well as information technology (IT) and business professionals. While enterprise architecture has been proposed as a solution to the business-IT alignment problem, there is little theoretical basis that would explain how enterprise architecture work can lead to better alignment. Here we draw on the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to highlight the role of enterprise architecture in achieving and sustaining such alignment. Specifically, we argue that enterprise architecture work helps to achieve agreement and thus alignment of the interests of internal actors within the context of enterprise interests and inscribes such agreement into architectural artifacts. Such artifacts can then be used in negotiations with external parties, such as IT vendors, thereby protecting the interests of the enterprise. Enterprise architecture work is also likely to reduce the likelihood of members of the enterprise, such as IT staff, from forming close ties with external parties, such as IT solution vendors, at the expense of the interests of the enterprise. We argue that this would result in stronger business-IT alignment. We conclude by highlighting two important goals of enterprise architecture as viewed through the ANT lens: (1) to help achieve an alignment of interests within the enterprise, and (2) to serve as a tool for protecting the interests of the enterprise in internal and external negotiations. These in turn point to the importance of the soft skills of enterprise architects and the need for clear and readily understandable enterprise architecture artifacts.