Post-Merger IS Integration: Influence of Process Level Business-IT Alignment on IT-based Business Value

Abstract

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A's) are increasingly popular in the last few decades. Research indicates about 60% of these mergers do not create value for shareholders. Research confirms that IT-Business alignment is one of the key drivers of business value creation. This conviction is seen in the M&A literature as well. The broad research interest of the thesis is to understand the influence of pre-integration process level IT-business alignment on the post-integration IT-business value. We build on the conception that the first order effect of IT-Business alignment occurs at the process level. In this thesis, we reason that the degree of IT-business alignment of the processes that are getting integrated influences the post-integration process level IT -business alignment and thereby impacting the IT-business value.