Strategic Business and IT Alignment: A Prioritized Theory Diagram

Many academic and practitioners´ studies have shown that misalignment or lack of alignment between information technology (IT) and business strategies is one of the main reasons why enterprises fail to exploit the full potential of their IT investments. Furthermore, organizations that have accomplished a high degree of alignment are often associated with better business efficiency and effectiveness performance. Consequently, strategic business and IT alignment (SBITA) has consistently been one of the top concerns of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in an enterprise. Despite these facts, there is little consensus on what SBITA really is; there are few documented theories, concepts and operational approaches for identifying, measuring, improving and maintaining the SBITA level in an enterprise. This paper is based on the strategic alignment model (SAM) proposed by Henderson & Venkatraman in 1993, which is considered one of the most widespread and accepted models among the alignment community. Basically, all later alignment models and consulting practices start from this model. The SAM consists of a set of alignment sub-topics presented partially in figure #3, which have been used for prioritizing the SBITA topic. An extensive literature survey has been carried out and the most relevant and cited references in the field have been categorized according to the sub-topics of the SAM. Doing so provided an indication of how important the alignment community finds the different aspects of SBITA