Examining IT Alignment in Inter-Organizational Networks: Development and Application of a Measurment Instrument

Business environments have been profoundly changed by emerging innovations in the field of information technology (IT). In addition, collaborative agreements, such as inter -organizational networks, have shaped modern economies. The field of intra-organizational IT alignment has shown that it contributes to the explanation of the functioning and value delivery of IT in an organizational context. This paper takes up this stance and translates it to the network level. The authors therefore develop a measurement instrument that examines the alignment of network processes and IT that aim to organize inter-organizational network collaboration. Furthermore, this instrument is then applied to the question of different governance modes and their influence on IT alignment. Since network governance plays an important role in the context of coordination and decision making, we propose that this is an important characteristic, which explains variance between networks. A study is conducted with respondents of 198 network organizations in Germany. The results support the validity of the measurement instrument and, moreover, show that networks with a centralized governance mode, indeed, better align IT with network processes. In doing so, this study contributes to the emerging field that tries to understand the role of IT in the functioning of inter-organizational networks.