Abstract
IT alignment research has remained limited primarily to intra-organisational alignment, leaving much to learn about the value-creation potential of its largely neglected inter-organisational counterpart. This study addresses this gap by investigating the role of IT-business operational alignment in inter-organisational relationships (IOR). Drawing on IT-based value-co creation and IT alignment literature, we propose that IOR IT-business operational alignment is an immediate source for co-creating business value and can be established through a capability-building process. Using a sample of 241 regional network collaborations in Germany, we find that IOR IT-business operational alignment directly affects relationship performance. Moreover, we find that three IOR IT capabilities – IT infrastructure integration, information exchange capability, and IT-enabled coordination – enable the development of IOR IT-business operational alignment. This study contributes to IS research on value co-creation by integrating the concept of IT-business alignment into a nomological network with well-established IOR IT capabilities. We provide theoretical explanations and empirical evidence that IT infrastructure integration, information exchange capability, and IT-enabled coordination indirectly affect relationship performance over an operational alignment process. For practice, we highlight the importance of monitoring IT-business operational alignment in IOR and provide recommendations on how to expand existing alignment efforts.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 166-187 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | European Journal of Information Systems |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 16 Jan 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 4 Mar 2022 |
Keywords
- IT capabilities
- IT-business operational alignment
- business value co-creation
- inter-organisational relationships
- networks
- the business value of IT
- Ojelanki Ngwenyama
- Jose Benitez