The Social Antecedents of Business/IT Alignment: Reviewing the Role of Social Network Structure in Alignment Research

Business/IT alignment is a major source of business value generated from IT and social structures at the interface between a firm’s business and IT units are of vital importance to business/IT alignment. Yet, there is a substantial gap in understanding the nature of these social structures. Based on a literature review comprising all related articles published in the AIS Senior Scholars’ Basket journals between January 2000 and August 2011, this paper identifies antecedents of alignment related to social network structure. These are translated into formal SNA concepts. The identification and formalization of social network structures allow IT governance to implement social engineering mechanisms influencing the social network structure, thus improving business/IT alignment and IT value. Examples for such translated arguments are high degree centrality of CIOs vis-à-vis other executives and strong ties in terms of cross-domain knowledge between CIOs and other executives. Finally, important avenues for future research are highlighted. Literature has highlighted the importance of social relationship structures between business and IT for alignment: these complex social structures are seen as important antecedents of alignment (Chan, 2002) and as IS resources that might offer a sustainable competitive advantage (Wade & Hulland, 2004). As this literature strand is quite young, though, little is known about the precise nature of these structures. However, we assume that the existing literature offers valuable implicit insights into the structure of the business/IT relationship that warrant a closer investigation. In order to structure these DOI: 10.4018/jitbag.2011070102 16 International Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance, 2(2), 15-32, July-December 2011 Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. arguments, we draw on social network analysis (SNA), a powerful perspective that offers formalized measures to describe structure and to make different patterns comparable (Wasserman & Faust, 2007). Hence, our research question is: Which antecedents of alignment are discussed in the alignment literature that are explicitly or implicitly based on social structures and how can they be translated to SNA measures? In order to answer this question, we reviewed alignment-related articles published in the eight journals of the extended AIS Senior Scholars’ Basket between January 2000 and August 2011 (AISnet.org, 2011). In the following, we describe the research background and literature review approach to then disclose emerging patterns of social structure. Finally, implications, limitations and promising future research directions are discussed.