مقایسه دیدگاه های مدیریت کسب و کار و مدیریت فناوری اطلاعات درباره عوامل موفقیت برای همراستایی استراتژیک

This paper reports on a study to determine whether there are any significant differences in perspectives of IT and business managers on what factors contribute to successful strategic alignment using Henderson and Venkatraman’s strategic alignment model as its framework. A general survey was undertaken over a range of industries and results indicated that the two perspectives were largely equivalent, except for their overall perception of the factors that contributed to success in strategic alignment. However, detailed case studies on container terminal operators showed very different patterns; this suggested that successful alignment of IT in industries which are highly IT-dependent would require very different perspectives of both IT and business managers although these are still convergent within the organisation.

The complexities of achieving business success through increased efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness, combined with innovative applications of IT, has heightened the awareness of both IT and business managers towards more strategically oriented approaches for planning and management [10] and [15]. In particular the need to align business and IT planning has been emphasised as both critically important and increasingly problematic [1], [2], [3] and [11]. This paper reports on a study to determine significant differences in perspectives of IT and business managers in assessing strategic alignment with business goals. The study uses the Henderson and Venkatraman [8] and [9] strategic alignment model. The study ranged over several industries and indicated that the management perspectives were largely equivalent. However, significant differences were found between industries. The conclusion of this analysis is that strategic alignment varies primarily in relation to the nature of industry and/or its dependence on IT.

From the statistical tests, one can conclude that there was no significant difference in the perspectives of business and IT managers with regard to strategic alignment. The one slight difference was in the area of problems of alignment. 1. Both groups indicate that ‘Business Strategy’ is the driver for strategic alignment. 2. Both groups think that the role of top management should be ‘Prioritizer’, to find the best way to allocate the resources within the organization. 3. Both groups think that the role of IS management should be ‘Executive Leadership’, to lead the IT function to achieve the strategic goals. 4. Both groups think that the performance criteria for strategy execution should be based on ‘Cost/Service Centre’, to measure costs and benefits. These perspectives, however, have to be matched with the perspectives within organisations. Only 50 percent of the business managers and 60 percent of the IS managers indicated that the matching of business and IT strategies in their companies was either successful or highly successful. While few indicated that they had a failure in linking business and IT strategies, there were still several in the ‘better than not doing anything at all’ group. The key success factors in business and IT strategy linkage (Hypothesis 12) were identified as : • top management selection of appropriate alignment approach to accomplish business objectives (40% in IT managers group, 35% in business managers group) • matching the internal IS with external market (21% in IT managers group, 26% in business managers group). When a selected group of ‘highly successful’ organisations in one industry (CTOs) was examined the pattern of perspective alignment was quite different. This could suggest that: • to be successful innovators or exploiters of IT, management need to have a focus on different issues. • becoming successful through application of IT changes the view of both IT and business managers. They had to realign not merely their IT strategy, but also their business strategy and to maintain close alignment between the two. The results of this study suggest that industry-specific guidelines should be developed and further that people should audit where they currently are with regard to IT dependency. Companies who see future strategy becoming technology-dependent require to change their emphasis to that adopted by the leaders in the technology driven industries and concentrate on technology transformation and competitive potential.