Meta-modelling the Strategic Alignment Model for Aligning Information

Systems Support to Speciﬁc Application Domains

Oscar Avila

and Virginie Goepp

Department of Systems and Computing Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Los Andes, Bogot

a, Colombia

INSA de Strasbourg-Icube, Strasbourg, France

Keywords:

Information System, Metamodel, Strategic Alignment, Strategic Alignment Model (SAM), Speciﬁc Domain.

Abstract:

In the current competitive worlwide market, Information Systems (IS) are today necessaries in order to sup-

port speciﬁc application domains or business areas that can give a strategic advantage to organizations. In this

context, IS alignment that exists when the IS and business goals and activities are in concordance, becomes

crucial. Several approaches have been proposed for building IS alignment. However, for aligning IS support to

speciﬁc application domains it is necessary to deal with their speciﬁc characteristics. Reviewing the literature,

IS alignment approaches addressing these speciﬁc characteristics have been proposed by extending the Strate-

gic Alignment Model (SAM) (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993). Nevertheless, means for building new

models from the SAM constitutive elements have not been proposed yet. To cope with this lack, we propose

two metamodels: the SAM static view metamodel and the SAM dynamic view metamodel. The instantiation

of these metamodels enables the build up of new models addressing the alignment of IS support to speciﬁc

application domains.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the emergency of a competitive worl-

wide market and other evolutive forces have impacted

several industrial sectors resulting in increased com-

petitiveness needs. These challenges have encouraged

the development of ﬂexible Information Systems (IS)

supporting speciﬁc application domains such as man-

ufacturing, ﬁnance, knowledge management that can

give a strategic advantage to companies.

As a result the role and importance of such IS have

changed signiﬁcantly over time shifting from simple

activity and business process support to competitive

advantage provider (Gao et al., 2008; Wu and Ellis,

2000). To meet this objective IS strategic alignment

that studies the link between the IS and the business

organisations goals and activities, becomes crucial. It

exists when both elements are in harmony (McKeen

and Smith, 2003). Thus, it is not surprising that ex-

ecutives rank alignment for almost 30 years as a top

priority and major concern (Luftman and Ben-Zvi,

2011).

Several approaches have been proposed for build-

ing IS alignment (Avila et al., 2009; Ullah and Lai,

2013). Most of them address general characteris-

tics related to Business and Information Technologies

(IT) domains. However, for aligning IS support to

speciﬁc application domains it is necessary to deal

with their speciﬁc characteristics. Indeed, these do-

mains are characterized by: (i) the heterogeneity of

the activities involved in their processes (Goepp et al.,

2008; Kalpic and Polajnar, 1997); (ii) the range of

users that are various and not experts in IT. As a re-

sult they have speciﬁc needs that have to be taken into

account through personalization in usability and func-

tionality (Fan and Poole, 2006); and (iii), the need

for integration between the IS support to these do-

mains and other systems, infrastructures and facili-

ties of the company (i.e. manufacturing infrastruc-

tures, ERP systems, ...) (Lin et al., 2012). In this

way, generic IS alignment approaches are no suitable

as they do not address these speciﬁcities. As a result

approaches for aligning IS support to speciﬁc appli-

cation domains are necessary.

Reviewing the literature, IS alignment approaches

for speciﬁc application domains have been proposed

mainly by extending the Strategic Alignment Model

(SAM) (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993). The

SAM draws a distinction between the external per-

spective of IT (IT strategy) and its internal devel-

opment (technology infrastructure and IT processes).

From this point of view, the SAM explicitly gives a

Avila O. and Goepp V..

Meta-modelling the Strategic Alignment Model for Aligning Information Systems Support to Speciﬁc Application Domains.

DOI: 10.5220/0005568300940099

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B-2015), pages 94-99

ISBN: 978-989-758-113-7

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

strategic role to and structures IT to support the ex-

ternal positioning of the company. The same ratio-

nal can be applied to speciﬁc application domains by

applying the SAM constitutive elements to these do-

mains. However these elements have not been for-

malized yet and there are no means of facilitating the

creation of new speciﬁc models for speciﬁc domains.

Indeed, existing extensions such as (Goedvolk et al.,

2000; Maes, 1999; Sun and Chen, 2008) extends the

SAM from scratch, without following any extension

formalism or logic, what prevents the fully exploita-

tion of the whole SAM characteristics for alignment.

Therefore the objective of this paper is to provide

means for supporting the building of models for align-

ing IS support to speciﬁc application domains that

can give a strategic advantage to the company. Such

means consist in two metamodels of the SAM which

allows the construction of new models by the instan-

tiation of its constitutive elements. To succeed in,

ﬁrstly we analyse the SAM and its existing extensions

in order to extract their constitutive elements. Then,

from these elements, we deﬁne the two SAM meta-

models: (i) the metamodel of the SAM static view (or

SAM structure) and (ii) the metamodel of the SAM

dynamic view (or SAM alignment sequences) which

constitutes means for the construction of new models

by instantiating them. This paper presents our pro-

posal as follows: Section 2 presents the SAM model.

Section 3 analyses SAM extensions. Section 4 de-

scribes the SAM metamodels. Finally, section 5 con-

cludes the paper and outlines future work.

2 THE STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

MODEL (SAM)

2.1 The SAM Structure

The SAM (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993) is

structured in terms of three classes of concepts:

• Domains: two domains are involved: Business

and IT;

• Perspectives or levels: these split domains into

two subdomains: external (strategy) and internal

(structure);

• Components: each subdomain is further detailed

through three components describing the set of

decisions to be taken in the alignment border:

scope, competencies and governance in the exter-

nal level; infrastructure, skills and processes in the

internal level.

2.2 SAM Building Blocks and

Alignment Sequences

The SAM is conceptualized in terms of two funda-

mental characteristics of strategic management also

called building blocks (Henderson and Venkatraman,

1993):

• Strategic ﬁt: the interrelationships between exter-

nal and internal levels of a domain and

• Functional integration: integration between the

Business and the IT domains. On the internal

level, it is named operational integration. On the

external level, the link between Business and IT

strategies refers to strategic integration.

According to (Luftman et al., 1993), a domain can

be classiﬁed according to its position in an alignment

sequence as (i) Anchor domain; (ii) Pivot domain;

(iii) Impacted domain. In (Henderson and Venkatra-

man, 1993) four alignment sequences are provided

that address strategic ﬁt and functional integration.

They follow three building rules:

• Alignment rule A: An alignment sequence deals

with a cross-domain relation in the form of a

strategic ﬁt and a functional integration, implying

three domains.

• Alignment rule B: An alignment sequence runs

from the anchor domain to the impacted domain

through the pivot domain.

• Alignment rule C: the SAM considers only

planned sequences as a result the anchor domain

takes place at the external level.

The four proposed sequences are described in Ta-

ble 1 in which we represent the anchor domain with a

square, the pivot domain with point and the impacted

one with a triangle.

Table 1: SAM alignment perspectives adapted from (Hen-

derson and Venkatraman, 1993).

Name of the

perspective

Perspective

Anchor domain

Strategy Execution Business strategy

Technology

Transformation

Business strategy

Competitive Potential

IT strategy

Service Level

IT strategy

Meta-modellingtheStrategicAlignmentModelforAligningInformationSystemsSupporttoSpecificApplicationDomains

2.3 SAM Explotatiton Works

The SAM has attracted a lot of researchers. The

works related to the use and exploitation of the SAM,

can be divided in three main research streams: (i)

enhancement of the SAM use through additional ex-

ploitation processes; (ii) application of the SAM to

other research ﬁelds and (iv) SAM extensions.

The ﬁrst stream tries to operationalize the SAM

for management purposes at a strategic level. For ex-

ample, in (Luftman et al., 1993) the SAM and the four

planned sequences are exploited in order to choose

the IT strategy and planning method that the best ﬁts

to a given sequence. In (Luftman, 1996), the model is

reviewed in order to identify enablers and inhibitors

to alignment within organisation. In (Avison et al.,

2004), the SAM is completed with a set of steps help-

ing managers to identify the current level of alignment

with the business and also to control future alignment.

The second research stream is more recent and

consists in using the SAM as a framework exploited

for a speciﬁc concern or coupled with other ﬁelds.

First, in the area of inter-organizational IS alignment,

the SAM is used as a basis to tackle this speciﬁc kind

of alignment (Neubert et al., 2011) and (Sun and Lai,

2011). Second, the SAM is replaced in other research

ﬁelds such as enterprise architecture design (Lopata

et al., 2012; Van Eck et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2008) or

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

(Esmaili et al., 2010; Kashanchi and Toland, 2006).

Last, the SAM has been extended in order to

give a more strategic role to speciﬁc application do-

mains or business areas and deal with their speciﬁc

characteristics. Among the extensions of the SAM

we can ﬁnd the Generic Framework (Maes, 1999),

the Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) (Goed-

volk et al., 2000), the Uniﬁed framework (Maes

et al., 2000) and the Knowledge Management Strate-

gic Alignment Model (KMSAM) (Sun and Chen,

2008). An analysis of these extensions is made in or-

der to verify the potential contributions of these works

to our goal. Thus, for each extension, we present how

the extension was performed and its features and ob-

jectives.

3 THE SAM EXTENSION WORKS

3.1 The Generic Framework

Maes proposes in (Maes, 1999), the Generic Frame-

work that aims at separating the issues related to in-

formation management to these related to IT support,

while providing a central role to information. This

framework is a double extension of the original SAM:

(i) The ﬁrst extension consists in replacing the internal

level (structure and process) of the original SAM by

two new levels: the “structure” and “operations” lev-

els. The structure level, allocated to the centre, plays

the role of “hub” between the formulation of long-

term strategic vision (strategy level) and the perform-

ing of organizational short-term operations (opera-

tions level). (ii) The second extension adds a new do-

main, namely, “Information / Communication” (I/C)

which seeks to separate the issues related to informa-

tion management to these related to IT support, while

giving a central role to the information.

The only subdomains remaining unchanged in this

extension are Business strategy and IT strategy. Other

subdomains contain modiﬁed components from those

proposed in the original SAM. However, the content

of different components of the generic framework are

not detailed and remain therefore fuzzy.

3.2 Integrated Architecture Framework

(IAF)

The Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) (Goed-

volk et al., 2000) aims at supporting Enterprise Ar-

chitecture work. It is a three dimension framework.

The ﬁrst dimension represents the domains that are

taken into account. There are four domains. As,

for the generic framework, the information domain

is added. The IT domain is further divided into in-

formation system and technology infrastructure. The

second dimension is the levels addressed. There are

three: the contextual level related to the external level

of the SAM and the conceptual, logical and physical

levels related to the internal level of SAM. They cor-

respond to design phases. The third dimension intro-

duces speciﬁc concerns, for example, Governance and

Security. Both concerns aim at integrating related is-

sues at the four framework domains. This framework

does not describe the characteristics of its dimensions,

domains or levels.

3.3 The Uniﬁed Framework

The uniﬁed framework (Maes et al., 2000) combines

the generic framework and the IAF. Both frameworks

have different purposes. The generic framework is a

tool for management, enabling to position and interre-

late the different aspects of information management

and hence of the business-IT relationship. The IAF

is a design tool, aiming at the development of mutu-

ally aligned business and IT system through a uniﬁed

architecture. As a result, the uniﬁed framework con-

tents both management and design components. The

ICE-B2015-InternationalConferenceone-Business

columns of the uniﬁed framework are the same as for

the IAF but renamed technology systems and technol-

ogy infrastructure. The rows detail the management

concerns with the three levels of the uniﬁed frame-

work (strategy, structure, operations). The third di-

mension represents the design concerns. The contex-

tual design level is mapped to the strategy level. The

conceptual, logical and transformational design lev-

els are mapped to the structure level. Here, the SAM

structure is reﬁned with additional domains and levels

and further extended with an additional dimension.

3.4 Knowledge Management Strategic

Alignment Model (KMSAM)

The KMSAM (Sun and Chen, 2008) is the result of

a study made by the authors on the importance of

aligning Business, Knowledge Management and IT

strategies. According to this study, the alignment of

these three strategies can lead to improve knowledge

management and organization performance. This ex-

tension involves: (i) A new external domain to the

original SAM, i.e., the knowledge management strat-

egy, which nature is not detailed (ii) Two alignment

sequences between the new external domain (knowl-

edge management strategy) and the two external do-

mains originally deﬁned in the SAM (Business strat-

egy and IT strategy). The interpretation of the two

alignment sequences is described as follows: (i) On

the one hand, the alignment between the IT strat-

egy and the Knowledge Management strategy is inter-

preted by the authors as the choice of IT support for

knowledge storage and the creation of knowledge net-

works. (ii) On the other hand, the alignment between

Business strategy, IT strategy and Knowledge Man-

agement strategy is interpreted as the development of

knowledge resources (models, networks, etc.) to ar-

ticulate the implementation of the Business strategy

within the organization, while using the most adapted

IT.

3.5 Analysis of the SAM Extensions

Works previously studied aim at extending the struc-

ture of the original SAM and providing alignment

sequences. Works extending the SAM structure add

new:

• Domains: Works adding new organizational do-

mains like (Maes, 1999; Goedvolk et al., 2000;

Sun and Chen, 2008) attempt to give a more

strategic role to these domains, taking advantage

of their features, to improve the performance of

the organization or strengthen its position on the

market.

• Levels or perspectives: Works adding new per-

spectives or levels to the original SAM (Maes,

1999; Sun and Chen, 2008) intend to synchronize

strategic objectives, placed externally and gener-

ally deﬁned to long-term, and the deployment of

resources, placed internally and generally deﬁned

to medium / short term.

• Dimensions: The only work adding a new dimen-

sion is the IAF (Goedvolk et al., 2000). It aims

at integrating concerns related to “governance”

and “security” to the 4 domains proposed in this

framework.

These works do not detail the nature or composi-

tion of the dimensions, levels or domains added. In-

deed, the generic framework is the only work describ-

ing the components that constitute the added domains.

However, this description is fairly general and does

not speciﬁcally detail the decisions and activities re-

lated to each component.

Concerning the alignment sequences, the exten-

sion works, with exception of the KMSAM, do not

provide new ones for aligning the new domains to

those already existing in the original SAM. The KM-

SAM provides two alignment sequences for integrat-

ing the Business, Knowledge Management and IT

strategies. However, these alignment sequences do

not support the implementation and execution of these

strategies because the internal level is not taken into

account.

3.6 Towards the SAM Metamodels

A metamodel abstracts the concepts and relations of

a speciﬁc domain and represents the structure of this

speciﬁc domain deﬁning what can and cannot be ex-

pressed in the models (K

uhne, 2006). Typically, the

process of models and metamodels construction fol-

lows a chronological order where the metamodel is

created before the model. However, in some con-

texts this is not the case (G

omez et al., 2012).That

is the case of IS alignment context, in which the con-

struction of the SAM and its extensions models did

not follow this order. In fact, the SAM was proposed

by replicating the Business domain structure in order

to build up the IT domain. Therefore, as the Busi-

ness domain involved two levels (external and inter-

nal) and three components at each level, the IT do-

main includes: two levels with three components at

each level. Furthermore, as we argued in the last sub-

section, the SAM extensions for speciﬁc applications

were built up mainly by replying this same logic.

In order to facilitate the construction of new SAM

extensions we propose to metamodel the SAM struc-

ture and alignment sequences. Indeed, the instantia-

Meta-modellingtheStrategicAlignmentModelforAligningInformationSystemsSupporttoSpecificApplicationDomains

tion of the resulting metamodels will allow the build-

ing of the structure for speciﬁc IS alignment models

as well as the proposition of speciﬁc alignment se-

quences. To succeed in we undertake the following

work in the next section: (i) An analysis of the struc-

ture of the original SAM and its extensions, what we

call the SAM static view, in order to identify their

structure principles and provide the static metamodel

view. (ii) An analysis of the alignment sequences of

the original SAM, what we call the SAM dynamic

view, in order to ﬁnd out their building principles and

provide the dynamic metamodel view.

4 THE SAM METAMODELS

A metamodel is a way to describe the elements of

the reality and the valid ways to relate them (B

ezivin,

2005). Thus, using metamodels is very pertinent in

the IS alignment ﬁeld as alignment models need to

be built by following semantic concepts representing

components, issues, concerns.

4.1 Static Metamodel View

As we showed in the last section, the static view of the

SAM and its extensions includes structure elements

such as: domains, levels, concerns and components.

In fact, the SAM domains are devised by levels and

are characterised by components on which concerns

must be addressed. We propose thus to take into con-

sideration four structure elements for the static meta-

model view (see Figure 1):

• Domain: representing functional areas, organisa-

tional areas, organisational viewpoint etc.

• Level: dividing domains and giving them abstrac-

tion or implementation hierarchy.

• Component: complex constituent grouping deci-

sions with similar characteristics for the domains.

• Concern: representing matters or issues (gover-

nance, security, etc.) on related components.

4.2 Dynamic Metamodel View

As we showed previously, alignment between SAM

domains involves the following conceptual elements

that we take into consideration for the dynamic view

metamodel (see Figure 2):

• Building block: relationship representing align-

ment between two domains or two levels.

• Alignment sequence: cross domain relationship

that involves more than one building block.

Figure 1: Metamodel of the SAM static view.

• Role: characterising domains in the alignment se-

quence.

• Building Rules: principles that governs the con-

struction of alignment sequences.

Figure 2: Metamodel of the SAM dynamic view.

5 CONCLUSIONS

IS alignment is a crucial concern for many compa-

nies seeking the best value from their IT investments.

To succeed, analyst need models on which they can

rely. In this boarder, our objective here is to provide

means to work out such models that are adapted to

speciﬁc concerns and application areas such as man-

ufacturing, product design or ﬁnance. Therefore we

propose to extract the metamodels of the SAM that

is one of the most widespread models of alignment.

On the one hand we build the static metamodel view

formalizing the concepts of domain, level, compo-

nent and concern. This view enables the formaliza-

tion of the decisions that have to be made to build

strategic alignment. On the other hand we propose

the dynamic metamodel view. It formalizes align-

ment building blocks, domain roles and building rules

for building speciﬁc alignment sequences. These rep-

resent the way the decisions are interrelated during

alignment. These metamodels are a ﬁrst step to create

new alignment models for speciﬁc areas or concern.

However to show their applicability it is necessary to

address a study case and to facilitate the building of

ICE-B2015-InternationalConferenceone-Business

new models and alignment sequences from them to

implement a software tool.

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