To compete in a highly dynamic marketplace, firms must frequently adapt and align their competitive strategies and information systems. The dominant literature on the strategic fit of a firm's information systems focuses primarily on high-level measures of the strategic fit of a firm's overall IS portfolio and the impact of fit on business performance. This paper addresses the need for a more fine-grained approach for assessing the specific areas of misfit between a firm's competitive strategies and IS capabilities. We describe the design and evaluation of a multilevel strategic fit (MSF) measurement model that enables researchers and practitioners to measure the strategic fit of a firm's information systems at both an overall and a detailed level. The steps in the model include identifying the relevant IS capabilities according to the type of system; measuring the current level of support for each capability using a capabilities instrument; identifying the ideal level of support for each capability using an adaptation of Conant et al.'s (1990) instrument to assess strategic archetype; and comparing the ideal and realized level of support for each capability. Evidence from a multiple case study analysis indicates that the fine-grained assessment of strategic fit can strengthen the validity, utility, and ease of corroboration of the strategic fit measurement outputs. The paper also demonstrates how an iterative design science research approach, with its emphasis on evaluating the utility of prototype artifacts, is well suited to developing field-tested and theoretically grounded measurement models and instruments that are accessible to practitioners. This focus on practical utility in turn provides researchers with results that can be more readily corroborated, thus improving the quality and usefulness of the research findings.
The impact of information systems and technology on business performance has increased noticeably during the last decade. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on strategic IS management by pursuing three specific goals. First, it seeks to provide further insights into the performance implications of the alignment between business and IS strategies. Thus, in viewing alignment and its performance implications, this paper employs a theory-driven approach, which incorporates prior knowledge and is therefore able to contribute to the cumulative stream of research in this area. IS strategy is directly concerned with business applications, and there have been previous suggestions that it should be aligned with the business strategy. IS strategy attributes are mapped to IS strategy types in a similar manners The IS strategy best aligned with each business strategy is examined in terms of four IS strategy attributes. Three of these--operational support systems, market information systems, and strategic decision support systems--reflect the traditional classification of information systems into transaction processing systems, management information systems, and decision support systems, respectively.
A comprehensive review was conducted of information technology (IT) value articles in the "Communications of the ACM," "Information Systems Research," "Journal of Management Information Systems," and "MIS Quarterly" from 1993 to 1998. IT-value measures published during this period were documented, classified, analyzed, and reported. The review of these journal articles revealed a schism between the use of organization-level measures and other measures. "Communications of the ACM" and "Information Systems Research" also provided strong evidence of a schism between the use of quantitative and qualitative measures in IT-value research. The "Journal of Management Information Systems" and "MIS Quarterly" data provided more limited evidence of this schism as well. These schisms have become more pronounced over time. This may be due partly to an increasing reliance on secondary data set analyses that use only quantitative measures and organization-level analyses. The current research confirmed what many researchers suspect--schisms exist, and may be deepening, in IT-value research.
Information systems strategic alignment--the fit between business strategic orientation and information systems (IS) strategic orientation--is an important concept. This study measured business strategic orientation, IS strategic orientation, and IS strategic alignment, and investigated their implications for perceived IS effectiveness and business performance. Analyses of data gathered in a mail survey of North American financial services and manufacturing firms indicated that 1) business strategic orientation, IS strategic orientation, and IS strategic alignment are modeled best by utilizing holistic, 'systems' approaches instead of dimension-specific, 'bivariate' approaches, 2) three generic IS strategic orientations can be detected, 3) user information satisfaction does not capture important strategic aspects of IS effectiveness, 4) IS strategic alignment is a better predictor of IS effectiveness than is strategic orientation, and 5) business strategic orientation, IS strategic alignment, and IS effectiveness have positive impacts on business performance.