Business-IT alignment, alignment research value, alignment process over time, tactical-IT alignment, structural alignment, Informal organisation structure
Introduction
A well established view for alignment is: to reach a common goal, business and IT need to be aligned at both the planning and execution levels (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2009, Chan and Reich, 2007). For two decades IS literature has emphasised the importance of business-IT alignment for organisational effectiveness. The overall theme of this essay is to review this specific strand of literature to evaluate alignment as an ongoing process as compared to alignment as a preset state.
The value of alignment research has been challenged by many researchers; in fact it has been argued that alignment is not always desired and that alignment research (so far) is too theoretical (Chan and Reich, 2007).
This essay examines diverse viewpoints on the value of the alignment research argument. It then sets out a summary of the challenges in attaining alignment, followed by a review of the process models for ongoing alignment and structural alignment. It also presents the real-time dynamic alignment perspective underpinning two specific papers on operational or tactical alignment (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2009) and informal organisation structures (Y. Chan, 2002).
The core arguments of this critical review essay are as put forward in Chan's well considered literature reviews on the subject of IT alignment (Chan and Reich, 2007, Yolande and Blaize Horner, 2007)
Value of alignment research
The importance of Business-IT alignment has been emphasised by many scholars and practitioners for almost two decades (Venkatraman et al., 1993). Despite their splendid efforts it has so far not seen the Business-IT 'Nirvana' (Grant, 2010). This 'Nirvana' is interpreted as an ongoing alignment of well synchronised Business-IT efforts delivering astonishing returns to business.
Consequently, this prompts many scholars to challenge the value of alignment research. There are several flavours to this argument: from failure of literature to capturing important phenomenon to the desirability of alignment in all situations. This section will consider four main themes of arguments to examine the debate (Chan and Reich, 2007). These arguments will be assessed further along with additional debate as part of the summative essay.
Ciborra argues that alignment literature represents a sanitised state of the Business-IT context which does not capture the real-life messiness of the situation (Ciborra, 1997). It is then further argued by various other scholars that business is a complex and continuously changing occurrence, hence working towards a pre conceived state of alignment could be unrealistic. Another strand of challenge against the alignment research is that if business strategy is incomplete or if it does not exist then the objective of attainment of alignment is disgruntled. On the contrary, it is argued that if alignment between business and IT is closely attained (tight) then it is extremely difficult to retain the alignment with ever changing business dynamics. These counter arguments raise a critical question - So if the alignment research not retains much value should we abandon the study of alignment? (Chan and Reich, 2007, Ciborra, 1997)
Numerous surveys from the practitioner community have highlighted alignment as a top concern in the last 10 years among CEOs and CIOs (Sabberwal and Chan, 2001). Chan's view suggests that core challenges are against attainment of alignment rather than challenge to the value of alignment research (Sabberwal and Chan, 2001). Grant, in his editorial paper, proposes a new leans (did you mean lens?) to view the alignment issue, arguing that these challenges exist because the view of alignment taken in the mainstream literature presumes engineering (standardise, measurable, achievable) as an only view of attaining alignment. He suggests breaking the silo of engineering view of alignment research and instead proposes the notion of an agriculture view of alignment. He suggests in his new view that alignment should be institutionalised and infused with planning and execution levels in every day business strategies (Grant, 2010).
Alignment as an on going process
This essay sees Grant's argument positively and investigates further literature for tactical level dynamism in alignment research arena. It starts with looking at the perspective of alignment as an on going process, it then links it into the notion of dynamic nature of execution (operation-tactical) level alignment followed by an evaluation of the importance of informal organisation structures.
It is well discussed among alignment research scholars that alignment is an ongoing journey rather than a predefined end state. A completely aligned static organisation state is unrealistic. Yet, a somewhat unanswered question in alignment research is how to align a rather static ICT implementation of an organisation with ever changing business challenges (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2009).
This section of the summative essay investigates different approaches of the alignment process and then highlights specific functions requiring continues adjustment to sustain alignment. The essay then pursues the analysis pattern presented by Chan (Chan and Reich, 2007) to review other aspects of process models of alignment.
As part of summative essay, this section turns to emergence of various alignment models within organisation over time. The follow up section on the other hand discuss the need of tactical-operational alignment. It then follows insight of processes and models for the same. The objective for next section of the essay is to capture importance of maintaining a real-time alignment at operation level compare to strategic alignment models discussed as part of this section of the essay (Y. Chan, 2002, Chan and Reich, 2007, Yolande and Blaize Horner, 2007).
Operational or tactical alignment
This section of the essay illustrates the importance of dynamic and real-time alignment process between IT and business at tactical and operational level.
It is argued that to successfully reach a common Business and IT alignment goal, it is required to achieve alignment at both the planning level (strategic) and at the execution level (operational). Alignment at strategic level makes sure that IT plans and business plans are synchronised to support common strategic objectives. Alignment at operational or tactical level ensures that planned activities are successfully implemented, maintained and used and equally activities that are not part of the plan are not implemented (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2009). It is claimed that this type of tactical alignment is core to successful Business-IT alignment. However it has also been identified that tactical alignment is hard to achieve due to various tangible issues associated with day to day business (Tarafdar and Qrunfleh, 2009).
Further to the claim above, as part of the summative essay, this section will present types of alignment states and processes for tactical Business-IT alignment, followed by exploration of further literature to find the evidence to support the pragmatic claim about the importance of tactical alignment.
Position of informal organisational structures
IS literature has put forward a number of alignment dimensions. A large part of this literature focuses upon strategic alignment although both strategic and structural alignment influences the business performance.
The structural alignment dimension breaks down in to two parts - formal organisation structures and information organisational structures. As part of the summative essay, this is followed by a summary of the formal organisational structures; this section of the essay argues position of the flexible and informal organisation structure as a significant alignment dimension (Chan and Reich, 2007).
In order to support this argument as part of summative work, essay considers further literature review in structural alignment to understand the degree at which structural alignment influences the business-IT performance (Lee and Leifer, 1995). It will then draw on further practice-based view from Chan's explicit work on "Informal Organisation Structure"(Y. Chan, 2002, Raymond et al., 1995).
This research provides convincing evidence to support the argument of importance of flexible and informal organisation structure for attain ongoing alignment and sustain performance improvement.
Conclusion
This short literature review in alignment research suggests that in addition to existing research in conceptual frameworks and models further research is needed on the subject of retaining ongoing alignment at operational level in order to sustain performance improvement gained by attaining alignment. This review recommends adapting fresh ideas such as those suggested by Grant on agriculture view of alignment for further research (Grant, 2010).
