Reconceptualizing the concept of business and IT alignment: from engineering to agriculture

European Journal of Information Systems (2010) 19, 619–624. doi:10.1057/ejis.2010.50 We have been talking about strategic alignment between the business and information technology (IT) in organizational endeavor for at least two decades now (Venkatraman et al., 1993). Yet, despite heroic efforts on the part of researchers and practitioners we appear to be still far from achieving this business–IT ‘nirvana’, where the efforts of business and IT are synchronized as a well-engineered machine delivering extraordinary value to the business. Researchers have argued that alignment, while a complex and dynamic process, occurs when there is congruence between what the business wants to achieve (its strategy) and how IT may serve that strategy. The thinking is that if business and IT can really become aligned (integrated, synchronized and fused) then organizations will begin to realize extraordinary value from their investments in IT systems and processes, and the services they afford (Maes et al., 2000; Smaczny, 2001) Given that most constructions of the idea of business–IT alignment adopt a mechanistic perspective, the state of alignment envisaged is equivalent to a mirage, seeming to exist in vivid, lifelike color, but in reality, actually non-existent. As with the mirage in the desert, the expectation of a truly satisfying, thirst-quenching repast disappears into a bowl of sun-baked sand when the target is approached. Rather than chasing a dream, often thwarted by the structural and ideological rigidities maintained by vested interests in organizations, we call for more intense effort focused on cultivating and harvesting the products and services afforded by IT investment on an ongoing cycle. We advocate a shift, by both researchers and practitioners, from an engineering perspective on IT business alignment to one that embraces more of an agricultural view. Ciborra’s (1997) critique of the strategic alignment concept exposes the often-futile attempts made to control the relationship between IT and the business. He suggests that the sanitized perception of alignment offered by popular models cannot fully represent the ‘messiness’ of real-world efforts to apply IT in contributing to business effectiveness. As an alternative he suggests that success in deploying and appropriating the benefits of IT will occur through meaningful caretaking (borne out of intimate knowledge and understanding of the situated realities in which IT is being applied), coping with the multiple affordances (positive and negative, congruous and incongruous) of IT platforms and systems, and cultivating the natural evolution of socio–technical systems in ways that will allow the appropriation of benefits over the long term. This accords with emerging ecological views of information system (IS) (Baskerville & Pries-Heje, 2001). Ciborra’s critique notwithstanding, the mechanistic view of the strategic alignment concept persists in the IS research and practitioner literatures (Avison et al., 2004; Bergeron et al., 2004; Byrd et al., 2005; Tallon, 2008; Preston & Karahanna, 2009; Johnson & Lederer, 2010). Why is this so? The persistence of the strategic alignment concept in the IS research and practitioner literature results from the acceptance of a mechanistic view of European Journal of Information Systems (2010) 19, 619–624 & 2010 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/10