Delivering Business Value of Information Technology: the Moderating Role of Alignment

The business value of IT has been hugely studied in previous research. Although much effort has been paid to it, the so-called “IT productivity paradox” does not seem to be completely resolved so far. Some researchers argued that it is an issue of analysis level, while others tried to come up with new measures of firm performance. Another perspective, which is adopted in this paper, is to find out the complementary assets which facilitates the realization of IT payoffs. I propose that alignment serves as one kind of such complementary asset: the strategic alignment between IT and business objectives may positively moderate the relationship between IT investment and firm performance. If the social dimension of alignment between IT and business objectives is high, the relationship between IT investment and firm performance is likely to be positive; otherwise, the relationship is likely to be neutral or negative.