Strategic alignment and strategic planning of information systems (IS) have been considered as significant topics in the IS field for the past twenty years. Abundant research has been conducted to understand how strategic alignment and strategic planning of IS support business operation and strategy in organisations and to develop frameworks to study strategic alignment. Nevertheless, there are still issues that need to be tackled, and one of them is environmental dynamism. Environmental dynamism or the changing environment can pose a serious threat to the success of IS planning and lead to alignment failure. Therefore whether and how organisations can sustain strategic alignment in a changing environment is a concern of many. This research aims to investigate the influence of changing environment, if any, on strategic alignment and strategic planning of IS, and how organisations can sustain strategic alignment of IS in a changing environment. The core research question of the research is: How can organisations adapt their strategic planning of IS and sustain strategic alignment in order to respond to the dynamic and competitive environment? A qualitative research strategy was employed for this research in order to achieve a better understanding of the impact of changing environments on organisations' IS planning and strategic alignment. An interpretive case study was carried out in a Chinese state owned company located in Shenzhen, Guangdong. 27 employees from various departments were interviewed and documents relevant to the study were collected. The data was analysed following the steps of thematic analysis and with the assistance of the research framework which was developed and presented in Chapter 3. The framework was built on the co-evolutionary theory and the dynamic capability perspective, which considers that strategic alignment is a continuous process. The framework also examines the process at different levels (strategic level, organisational/operational level, and individual level) in the context of changing environments. The findings of the research show that the internal environment of an organisation which is less turbulent may play a more influential role than a more changeable external environment does in sustainable strategic alignment. The findings also show that organisational resources can become potential barriers to making attempts to achieve strategic alignment. The framework describes the process of sustainable strategic alignment and the findings demonstrate how such a process can be affected by various factors, and how intended strategic alignment can easily be unrealised because of the combined effects of these factors. In addition, this study identifies and describes four challenges for sustainable strategic alignment (Attitude to IT/IS, Risk management, Lack of IS professionals and Lack of IS outsourcing options) and two dynamic capabilities for sustainable strategic alignment (IT flexibility and organisational agility) which can significantly affect sustainable strategic alignment. The results of this research contribute to the existing knowledge by extending the concept of strategic planning of IS and strategic alignment in dynamic environments; examining the relationship between strategic alignment and changing environments, as well as the significance of the sustainable strategic alignment; and investigating the process of sustainable strategic alignment in changing and competitive environments. In particular, this study proposes a process-based sustainable strategic alignment framework based on co-evolution and dynamic capabilities perspective. The study also identifies organisational resource as an internal environmental factor, affecting strategic alignment process, explores the effect of sustainable strategic alignment, identifies four potential challenges for sustainable strategic alignment, and extends sustainable strategic alignment concept in a state-own enterprise context. This study also has implications for practice and future research. IS executives/planners and top management can learn from this study how organisations can achieve sustainable strategic alignment by the process-based view and considering the challenges and dynamic capabilities identified in this research. The results of this research also provide a fertile ground for continuing research into sustainable strategic alignment. Future researchers may use the framework developed in this study to further investigate sustainable strategic alignment in dynamic environments. Also, the findings of this study need to be validated in different contexts to see how well the framework and the results can explain sustainable strategic alignment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:675551 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Wang, Zefeng |
| Contributors | Lin, Angela |
| Publisher | University of Sheffield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/11393/ |
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