Organizational Structure's Influence on Business-IT Alignment: Looking Back to Look Forward

Abstract

Despite the long list of cumulative research, business-IT alignment remains to be evasive for practitioners and researchers. As organizations continue to spend a significant amount of their resources on IT to improve the variety and quality of services, achieving and maintaining business-IT alignment is a timely issue. Studies indicate that organizational structure, among other factors, plays an important role on whether organizations succeed in achieving business-IT alignment. A systematic literature review is conducted to provide an overview of previous studies as well as point out possible future research directions. A total of 31 articles were identified and included in the review. The findings indicate that there are few studies poised to address the lack of knowledge on how the formal/informal organizational structure's influence on business-IT alignment. The study presents a summary of previous findings on organizational structure's influence on business-IT alignment and identifies potential future research directions.