Factors Affecting Business and Information Technology Alignment at the Lower Levels of a Public Organisation

1. Introduction

With an increasing dependency of organisational activity on information systems (IS) based on innovation of information technology (IT), the alignment of business and IT strategies in organisations becomes a key concern amongst the organisational management, and attracts the attention of academics (Luftman & Ben-Zvi, 2011). Reich & Benbasat (2000) define alignment as “the degree to which the IT mission, objectives, plans and people support are supported by the business mission, objectives plans and people.” The majority of the literature focuses on alignment factors at the senior and executive management level. We lack knowledge on alignment in organisations at an operational level or front line. Lower level employees often carry out the strategy in an operational capacity (Gallo, 2010). In the words of Chan & Reich (2007, p. 301), “…formal strategies are often only implemented at the upper levels of the organisations, yet strategy is carried out on the front line.” There is a call for more studies in this area (Walentowitz, Beimborn, Schroiff, & Weitzel, 2011). This research attempts to fill in this gap. Specifically, it will identify factors affecting alignment at the lower levels of organisations.

This paper offers a case study based on semi-structured interviews. Section 2 reviews the literature in the field of business and IT strategic alignment, and its relevance to organisations. Section 3 introduces the research methodology. Section 4 presents the case study. Section 5 discusses the findings, and Section 6 concludes this paper.