Aligning IT/IS with Business Strategy Re-Visited: A View from Complex Adaptive Systems

This paper explores the co-relational process activities of information technology and systems (IT/IS) and business strategy alignment. The notion of “process” as being strategy and strategic alignment has been observed but not examined. Organizations are both complex and adaptive, and these attributes create significant challenges for managers when assessing strategic requirements. A need exists to further understand alignment as a process and embrace this concept when aligning business IT/IS with the strategic goals of the organisation. This highlights an important distinction of “process” that recasts the nature of congruence and reassesses the appropriateness and usefulness of current practice. The authors propose the use of principles underpinning complex adaptive systems as a way to re-orientate IT/IS alignment in a meaningful and more appropriate manner. The context for the study is the UK Health Service, and informed by a case analysis of 26 senior members from a Scottish Health Board. days, by information, systems, and information systems, some of which may be computer based. Business alignment helps to improve business processes, reduces operational costs, and promotes real-time visibility in business performance. In recent years, businesses have moved increasingly from centralized and closed environments to environments that are more distributed, open and collaborative or shared, in nature and scope. As a result, business processes have become increasingly complex and dynamic as they seek to cope with a wide range of internal and DOI: 10.4018/jitbag.2010070101 2 International Journal on IT/Business Alignment and Governance, 1(3), 1-18, July-September 2010 Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. external interactions and changes, which, more traditional views of strategy are struggling to explain and address fully. One way of extending our thinking regarding IT/IS alignment is to think of businesses as eco-systems (Iansiti & Levien, 2004), and thus a set of interconnected and interdependent relationships, which relates to all activities, and in particular, IT/IS alignment. This ecosystems view supports the need for this paper and others to conceptualise IT/IS alignment from a ‘process’ ideological paradigm, which introduces and argues for the use of complex adaptive systems as a meaningful way to help make sense of what is happening in and during the process of IT/IS alignment. It is the intention of this paper that by taking this eco-systems/ complex adaptive systems perspective to assist practitioners to conceptualise and determine how to manage the complex actions and interactions that exist during IT/IS alignment.