Exploring Process-Level Business/IT Alignment: Across Synchronous and Asynchronous Processes

Abstract

This study looks at the persistent issue of business/IT alignment. While prior literature mainly focuses on business/IT alignment at the organizational level, this study adopts a process-level perspective. Specifically, considering the inherent idiosyncrasies in individual business processes and what happens when they are paired with different IT architectures. Drawing on a single case study, this study reveals that business/IT misalignment occurs when asynchronous IT architectures are paired with synchronous processes or when synchronous IT architectures are paired with asynchronous processes. Furthermore, the findings indicate that addressing misalignment introduces additional structural complexity across the IT architecture.

Coen van der Geest

PhD Candidate in Information Systems

My research interests include digital infrastructures, IT (Platform) Architectures and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).