Business-It alignment in the era of digital transformation: Quo vadis?

Abstract

For the last four decades, the alignment of business and IT strategies also referred to as business-IT alignment (BITA), has been recognised as one of the top concerns for leaders. The current digital transformation journey undertaken by most organisations, however, triggered a new approach to planning and executing business and IT strategies as well as pursuing BITA. A systematic literature review is conducted to capture the paradigmatic shift in research and practice. A total of 94 articles published between 2014 and 2018 were identified searching through databases known to index reputable IS journals and conference proceedings. The analysis of the review revealed the continued conceptual debate on BITA construct as well as new research topics. The significance of digital strategy, enterprise architecture models, as well as intelligent IT systems to enable elicitation, implementation and assessment of activities enabling BITA are garnering the attention of researchers. Potential research directions are presented.