| Summary: | 碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 資訊管理學系碩士在職專班 === 97 === Abstract
The role of information technology in an organization has evolved from supporting function to leading organizational decision-making, but conflict between business strategy and information technology never disappears in its context. Conflict leads to not only a waste of organizational resources, but an obstacle to enhance efficiency of the organization. The consequences results from inconsistency of strategies developed by different departments, whose function is different in nature, in an organization.
Some scholars argue that the alignment of IT and business strategy creates strategic synergy. A survey of CIO Magazine to Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) also finds that strategic alignment continues on the top of CITO’s to-do list in the past few years. Strategic alignment has been treated as a critical and time-consuming task. The survey result demonstrates the importance of strategic alignment.
Case study was selected as research methodology in this paper. From IT Governance perspective, two cases - an international finance institution and a local security firm – were analyzed based on Cobit 4.1 and strategic alignment models, and hope to have a further solution to organizational conflict through exploration of standards and guidance available in IT Governance.
This research infers few propositions for further discussion and shows that conflict is derived from inappropriate resource usage, crowding out of strategies, wrong process design, unsuitable organizational structure, and so on. Strategic alignment should start from categorizing roots of organizational conflict. Based on different type of conflict and expected result, different strategic alignment model shall be applied to resolve problems. An enterprise adjusts its strategy continuously in response to limitation on resources and uncertainty in its environment. Given changes in market, strategy, and an enterprise itself, consecutive correction is a normal pattern in the alignment process. In addition, departmental egoism in strategy development should be abandoned. Major challenge for an enterprise in the future will be how to develop cross-function strategic thinking and to train cross-function employees. In sum, only strategy developed under IT governance concept can reduce conflict and avoid waste of resources.
Finally, in addition to contribution in management and theoretical implications, this paper describes limitations in alignment of different strategies in reality and indicates several research directions to other researchers who are interested in further study of this topic.
Key words: Organizational Conflict, Strategic Alignment, IT Governance, Case Study
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