IT and Organizational Alignment: Impact and Value

Abstract

Responsibility for realizing the benefits of IT investments and the success of these benefits is not just the responsibility of the IT organization. An IT project can be completed perfectly, on-time, and onbudget, and still fail to succeed and realize the intended business benefits that justified the initial investment. True IT benefits realization and investment return only occurs when Business Units and IT work as partners with shared knowledge, joint commitment, and shared accountability for the success or failure for the project. Benefits also occur when they are measured, calling for jointly agreed on measures of success that are actually demonstrated at the end of an IT project. These measures of value and impact can be in many forms. Often value manifests as intermediate impacts in the value chain. The IT literature contains a great deal of knowledge on IT-Business alignment and shared knowledge, but is “light” on shared commitment and accountability, especially when tied to the actual impact of this alignment (dependent variables). This mini-track extends the existing scholarly literature and fills the gap between the discussion of ITBusiness relationships and the actual demonstration of impact. We believe that this Mini-track continues the HICSS tradition of showcasing theoretically sound and ground-breaking research that reflects, interprets, and leads the realities of IT organizations as an integral part of businesses. As IT is held more responsible for organizational performance, we, as academic researchers, hope to show that the ITBusiness relationship is essential to achieving validated and meaningful investment performance.