Alignment in the organizations strategy window (concentration on business strategy and operations strategy)

Abstract

Nowadays, strategy is defined at corporate, business and functional level. The success of the organizations depends not only on developing strategies at these levels but also alignment between them. In this paper, by delineating strategy levels and their differences, a window called organization's strategy window is introduced and then the concept of alignment and the method of alignment in the organization's strategic window are explained. Strategic alignment is divided into the two types: vertical alignment (alignment between business strategy and functional strategy) and horizontal alignment (alignment between functional units) and the vertical alignment of the functional strategy of operations and business strategy is explained in detail. An overview of the proposed approaches and studies in the field of alignment indicates that organizations that have created a suitable alignment between the elements of their strategy have a high performance. Therefore, a direct relationship between strategic alignment and performance can be defined.