Sharing a Vision: comparing business and IS managers' perceptions of strategic alignment issues

Abstract

This paper compares the perceptions of business and IS managers regarding the issues known to affect the achievement of alignment of IS with the business. Previous work has identified the status of IS managers, the nature of the IS and business managers' reltionship, and IS managers' levels of business knowledge, as being critical to attaining IS alignment. On these issues, the findings of this research are encouraging, and suggest that progress has been made in this area in the past fifteen years. The paper's main contribution is in identifying a new focus for alignment research - the exploration of three, interrelated issues: the extent to which the business and IS managers share a vision of the business advantages of strategic alignment; the extent to which they have a common understanding of the time lags required to achieve these advantages; and the specific requirements for educating business managers in these areas.