Guest editorial for the special section on “Technology acceptance, usage, and competitive advantage”

PurposeThis paper aims to present a dynamic model based on casual relationships among the most important effective factors on business–IT alignment in Agile businesses by using system dynamics modeling approach.Design/methodology/approachTo study the most important factors on agility and alignment, the data were collected by questionnaires filled by 201 experts and were analyzed by SPSS and PLS. Casual relationships among studied factors and efficiency coefficients of each factor were identified by fuzzy DEMATEL technique and analyzed by MATLAB and EXCELL. Finally, the dynamic model was plotted by VENSIM.FindingsAccording to the results, only “learning IT capabilities” are the most important casual factor that has the highest influence on the other factors. “Business responding capabilities” take the highest effect from the system, and “business sensing capabilities” are in the next rank.Practical implicationsThis study underpins effective IT deployment toward developing efficient IT capabilities to gain greater agility.Originality/valueThe dynamic capabilities view (DCV) has emerged as an influential theoretical and management framework in modern IS and agility researches. In this regard, we propose a conceptualization of dynamic capabilities in the form of an alignment model. Based on the dynamic capabilities, and on the alignment perspectives found in Henderson and Venkatraman’s seminal model, IT alignment is modeled as a process of reconfiguration of the firm’s IT and organizational resources, competencies and capabilities.

Organizations are facing the challenge of transforming their business models into digital firms, as companies are becoming part of the platform economy. The orchestration of the IT application landscape and strategic business–IT alignment is essential to gain transparency in surviving the digitalization. The important issues of IT and business alignment, cost reduction, organizational change, transformation, and fulfillment of legal requirements are becoming more important. The necessity of the “enterprise architect” rises importance. Enterprise architects do not, in general, consider themselves as active drivers for change. The research project answers the question of how are enterprise architects fostering business and IT alignment. The study focuses on an exploration in the evolution and changing role of the enterprise architect in the context of digital transformation. The research methodology consists of a systematic literature and applies a qualitative, explorative, and summative content analysis in the DACH region. Results indicate that fostering business and IT alignment require more than ever the role of an active intra-organizational networker and communicator in our complex digital organizational ecosystem. The profession of enterprise architects therefore has great opportunities but needs to transform the role from overseeing visualization to becoming the enabler for digitalization.

IT business value (ITBV) research generally state that various “good” IT management and IT governance practices influence positively IT deployment success and organizational performance. This has proved hard to verify empirically. For this study, the authors analyzed factors that influence IT deployment success. First, the authors identified potential factors, then hypothesized about the relationships among and between the factors and finally integrated the hypotheses into a research model. The authors then empirically evaluated the hypotheses and the entire research model. Special attention was placed on the Business-IT alignment, IT management and the consistency of IT investments in relation to the cyclical behavior of the economy. The consistency of IT investment is a novel factor introduced in this study to the ITBV research. The authors used survey data of 212 responses collected from CxOs during an economic recession. Empirical results confirmed that all research model factors impacted positively on IT deployment success.

Alignment of the business and IT strategies of organization required to achieve business goals. Business IT Alignment approach via communication, consider the dimensions of organizational culture, top management support and vision implementation as key success factor. Unified Strategic Alignment Model aims to improving understanding of strategic alignment business and IT, consist of business strategy, IT strategy, IT infrastructure and process, organization infrastructure and process. This paper proposed a model SAM based on organizational culture and characteristic adopter of technology in case study hospital in Bandung (West Java). Organizational culture will influence dimensions of strategic alignment model. Clan culture as organizational culture and early majority as characteristic adopter technology in hospital can help organization to achieve business IT-alignment.

Organizations introduce changes to adapt to an agile context in a turbulent environment. These change often have an impact on business and information technology. In most cases, the change impacts organizational elements that make the adaptation not well defined, leaving out elements that can lead to misalignment. The change is realized in this article as a project, which will impact all the Business-IT alignment elements. It is important to know the scope of the impact in order to make a complete adaptation. By reviewing the literature, we found that there is no work dealing with this aspect. To fill this gap, we determine the impact of the project on the organization by considering of Business-IT alignment and we proceed with a comparison of the AS IS model of the organization with the TO BE model which is the target to be implemented keeping the system aligned. Accordingly, we propose a metamodel for change by the impact of the project on the Business-IT alignment and a set of rules and algorithms to predict the impact and adaptation. To make these contributions operational, the implementation of Change Business-IT Alignment Tool and demonstrate its applicability through a case study of an urban agency.

In recent years, the literature has emphasized theory building in the context of Enterprise Architecture (EA) research. Specifically, scholars tend to focus on EA-based capabilities that organize and deploy organization-specific resources to align strategic objectives with the technology’s particular use. Despite the growth in EA studies, substantial gaps remain in the literature. The most substantial gaps are that the conceptualization of EA-based capabilities still lacks a firm base in theory and that there is limited empirical evidence on how EA-based capabilities drive business transformation and deliver benefits to the firm. Therefore, this study focuses on EA-based capabilities, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical foundation, and develops and tests a new research model that explains how dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities lead to organizational benefits. The research model’s hypotheses are tested using a dataset that contains responses from 299 CIO’s, IT managers, and lead architects. Based on this study’s outcomes, we contend that dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities positively enhance firms’ process innovation and business–IT alignment. These mediating forces are both positively associated with organizational benefits. The firms’ EA resources and specifically EA deployment practices are essential in cultivating dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities. This study advances our understanding of how to efficaciously de-lineate dynamic enterprise architecture capabilities in delivering benefits to the organization.

BITAM: An engineering-principled method for managing misalignments between business and IT architectures

Business–IT Alignment

This research article provides an overview of IT Governance and also discusses how we can leverage ISO/IEC 38500:2008 and COBIT framework to achieve the desired state between business and IT for effective IT Governance.

Even if SOA has received much attention, there is still no common definition of what a SOA is or what a SOA should provide for business. In this paper, we have therefore introduced a conceptual model on service orientation that explains the impact of service orientation on business processes and supporting applications. We consider this consolidation as an essential step for establishing methods for a better business IT alignment as well as more systematic and integrated business and software engineering in the context of service-oriented enterprises.KeywordsBusiness ProcessBusiness ServiceEnterprise ArchitectureSoftware ServiceFunction ServiceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In this paper the CIO of a large shipping company describes the challenge of IT-alignment in turbulent years from 2004 to 2010. Our research questions are; how should the CIO relate to a dynamic alignment gap where the business environments are turbulent. How should the CIO understand and manage the IT alignment gap when there is a difference between the espoused and real business strategy? Our framework addresses the interplay of business strategy and IT alignment in four generic types. Through our longitudinal case we show how the framework allows for a deeper analysis of some fundamental challenges for the CIO in turbulent times. We argue that the CIO never should take the business strategy for granted, and we discuss implications for future research. We also present practical implications for the CIO, and a set of recommendations for business management on how to close the gap.

What is the impact of operational (i.e. non-strategic) IT business alignment on IT usage? Using case studies in three branches of a retail bank employing identical information systems, many findings of the alignment literature can be supported. The cases also add new insights by showing that alignment is important in operations as well, and that alignment positively impacts IT usage. Especially mutual understanding between the business units and the IT unit turned out to be the single most important factor of IT usage that resulted from frequent interaction and, as far as the IT unit is concerned, from the business orientation of the IT personnel.

New competitive challenges have forced Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to re-examine their internal environment in order to improve competitive advantage. IT investments can improve firm performance in a way that it would be in “alignment” with business strategy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contemporary impact of IT and business strategy on Information Systems (IS) planning success, incorporating all these constructs into a model that is tested using Regression Analysis. Data were collected from IS executives in Greek SMEs.

Dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) emerged as a leading framework in the process of value creation for firms. Its core notion complements the premise of the resource-based view of the firm and is considered an important theoretical and management framework in modern information systems research. However, despite DCT's significant contributions, its strength and core focus are essentially in its use for historical firm performance explanation. Furthermore, valuable contributions have been made by several researchers to extend the DCT to fit the constantly changing IT environments and other imperative drivers for competitive performance. However, no DCT extension has been developed which allows firms to integrally assess their current state of maturity to derive imperative steps for further performance enhancements. In light of empirical advancement, this article aims to develop a strategic alignment model for IT flexibility and dynamic capabilities and empirically validates proposed hypotheses using correlation and regression analyses on a large data sample of 322 international firms. The authors conjecture that the combined synergetic effect of the underlying dimensions of a firm's IT flexibility architecture and dynamic capabilities enables organizations to cope with changing environmental conditions and drive competitive firm performance. Findings of this study suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between firms' degree of strategic alignment—defined as the degree of balance between all dimensions—and competitive firm performance. Strategic alignment can, therefore, be seen as an important condition that significantly influences a firm's competitive advantage in constantly changing environments. The proposed framework helps firms assess and improve their maturity and alignment of IT flexibility and dynamic capabilities. This article concludes with a discussion, suggestions for future research and managerial implications are also discussed.

The acceptance of technology at the higher educational level has been a significant discussion, with little attention on the gender dynamics on the acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI ) tools by senior lecturers. This study delved into a detailed analysis of the gender dynamics in the discussion of technology acceptance mainly AI tools, in foreign language (FL) education. Quantitative study approach was adopted in the process, and survey design was implemented. Data was collected using structured digital questionnaire, based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. A total of ninety-five (95) male senior lecturers and one hundred and three (103) female senior lecturers participated in the study. Analysis was conducted using relevant statistical measures. The results showed disparities in the attitudes and views of senior lecturers towards artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the context of FL education, greatly influenced by gender. In relation to usage, male senior lecturers have higher positive reactions (61.06%) in comparison to their female counterparts (46.6%). However, in relation to the assumption that AI technologies improve the performance of learners, 69% of male senior lecturers agree with this notion, but a substantially greater percentage of 72.81% of female senior lecturers hold the same perspective. Moreover, there exists a little disparity in the level of proficiency in using AI technologies across genders. Specifically, 56.84% of male senior lecturers see it as uncomplicated, while 61.16% of their female counterparts share the same sentiment. The gender discrepancy that is most notable pertains to the perceived level of ease in using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies during foreign language (FL) lessons. The data reveals that a majority of male senior lecturers, calculated as 69.48%, see the use of these tools very easy. In contrast, a much higher proportion of female senior lecturers, 86.41%, share the same perception. This discrepancy highlights a notable disparity in confidence levels between the two genders. These results together emphasise the changing gender dynamics in the acceptance of technology, interrogating conventional assumptions and underscoring the need for customised support systems to guarantee fair and efficient integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in foreign language instruction among senior lecturers.