Business-IT Alignment Research Field
A Systematic Literature Review
Marcos André Fernandes Spósito, Arilo C. Dias Neto and Raimundo da Silva Barreto
Instituto de Computação, Univerisidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM), Manaus, Brazil
Keywords: Business-IT Alignment, Status and Directions for the Research Field, Systematic Literature Review.
Abstract: The business-IT alignment has become an important research field that has been widely investigated by
different areas and with different viewpoints. Since the interest in the business-IT research field has grown it
has become important to monitor how it has been developed and what are the directions of ongoing research
within the field. This paper reports the performing of an extensive systematic literature review whose main
contribution is to provide an overview of the current status of development and possible further directions
for the business-IT alignment research field from the viewpoint covered by six issues: research topics,
alignment dimensions, business and IT domains, research goals, types of research results and research
methods. The main results indicate that BPM, IT Governance are the two most used research topic, the
cultural and social alignment dimensions and the IT strategy domain have been little adopted, there is
unnecessary worry about the development of the new approaches rather than taking advantage of the
existing ones, the research results are overly theoretical, most of the research is not performing the empirical
validity of its results. This paper indicates possible further directions and concluding that the current state of
the development of the business-IT research field can still need to gain more maturity.
1 INTRODUCTION
The business-IT alignment has become an important
research field that has been widely investigated by
different areas and with different viewpoints. The
relation between business and IT has remained a
frequently revisited topic in the IS literature for
several decades (Klischewski et al. 2015).
Since the interest in the business-IT research
field has grown it has become important to monitor
how it has been developed and what are the
dominant directions of ongoing research within the
field. Unfortunately, despite the larger number of
literature-review-based studies presented a wide
view of the characteristics, definitions and influence
factors to business-IT alignment and contributed to
the evolution of the field knowledge (Chan and
Reich, 2007; Aversano et al., 2012; Ullah and Lai,
2011), important research issues such as goals, type
of results and research methods carried out by
studies in this field have been little investigated.
In order to discover the current status of
development and chart out possible future directions
for the business-IT alignment research field we
conducted a strictly systematic process of literature
review guided by six research questions that cover
research topics, alignment dimensions, business and
IT domains, research goals, types of research results
and research methods.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2
describes the background; Section 3 shows related
studies to our research; in Section 4 we present a
systematic literature review (SLR) as the research
method used for this paper; Section 5 reports
quantitative and qualitative results; in Section 6 we
discuss the results and, finally, in Section 7 we
present our conclusions.
2 BACKGROUND
There are many conceptualizations for the business-
IT alignment presented in the literature. According
to Henderson and Venkatraman (1993), business-IT
alignment refers to strategic fit and functional
integration among four domains: business strategy,
IT strategy, business infrastructure, and IT
infrastructure. Conforming to Reich and Benbasat
(2000), it is the degree to which the IT mission,
objectives and plans support and are supported by
Spósito, M., Neto, A. and Barreto, R.
Business-IT Alignment Research Field - A Systematic Literature Review.
In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2016) - Volume 2, pages 549-558
ISBN: 978-989-758-187-8
Copyright
c
 2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
549

the business mission, objectives and plans.
According to Luftman (2000), business-IT
alignment refers to applying IT in an appropriate and
timely way, in harmony with business strategies,
goals and needs. Despite these conceptualizations
differ from each other, they all agree on the main
goal to achieve and sustain competitive advantages.
Based on these definitions it can be seen that the
alignment presents a number of debatable issues that
define dimensions for the business-IT alignment.
Chan and Reich (2007) identified five alignment
dimensions: strategic, structural, informal structural,
social and cultural dimensions. The strategic
dimension refers to the degree in which the business
plan and strategy and the IT plan and strategy
complement each other (Chan and Reich, 2007). The
structural dimension addresses the integration
between the business structure and IT structure,
including location of decision-making rights,
centralization or decentralization of IT (Chan, 2002).
The informal structural dimension is defined as
structures that transcend the formal division of labor
and the coordination of tasks (Chan, 2001). The
social dimension related to the mutual
comprehension between the business and IT
executives and their commitments to objectives and
missions (Reich and Benbasat, 2000). Finally,
cultural dimension comprises the cultural integration
between IT and business, considering styles,
behaviour and beliefs (Chan and Reich, 2007).
3 RELATED STUDIES
Several literature-review-based studies have
contributed to the evolution of the knowledge in the
business-IT alignment research field. Chan and
Reich (2007) provide one of the most complete
literature reviews in business-IT alignment,
addressing questions such as: What have we
learned? What creates alignment? They presented
alignment definition, factor, models, antecedents,
outcomes and implications to business-IT alignment.
More recent studies, such as those proposed in
Walentowitz (2012), Aversano et al. (2012),
Kaidalova and Seigerroth (2012), Ullah and Lai
(2013) and Jentsch and Beimborn (2014), also
provide a widely view on this area. For example,
Walentowitz (2012) developed an alignment map to
structure overview of alignment types describing
their relations and proposing an approach to locate
additional alignment definitions amongst existing
ones. Ullah and Lai (2013) conducted a systematic
literature review of the alignment topics, including
definitions, history, challenges, phases,
measurements approaches, the importance in
business industries, and contributions of software
engineering to business-IT alignment.
Our SLR differs from the previous literature
reviews that have a rather narrow focus on
definitions and characteristics of the business-IT
alignment. Like them we also provide an overview
of alignment issues, in special dimensions and
domains, but the main concern is verify the coverage
of the research issues, i.e. research method presented
by the business-IT alignment field, using a strictly
systematic process of literature review.
4 RESEARCH METHOD
In order to obtain an overview of the development of
business-IT alignment research field, we conducted
a SLR based on guidelines by Kitchenham and
Charters (2007). SLR involves three main activities:
planning the review, conducting the review, and
reporting the review (Kitchenham and Charters,
2007). The activities concerning the planning and
conducting of our SLR are described as follow in
this section and the activity concerning the reporting
of the results is presented in Section 5.
Research Questions: Since research questions
guide the design of the review, specifying them is
the most important part of any systematic review
(Kitchenham and Charters, 2007). We investigated
the six research questions (RQ) showed in Table 1.
Table 1: Research questions.
RQ1
What different research topics have been mostly used
for addressing business-IT alignment issues?
RQ2
What alignment dimensions are most/least explored in
the business-IT alignment research?
RQ3
What IT and business domains are most/least explored
in the business-IT alignment research?
RQ4 What are the business-IT alignment research goals?
RQ5
What types of research results are provided by
business-IT alignment researches?
RQ6
What research methods are most/least used by
business-IT alignment researches?
Research Sources: Although there are many
collections of research papers available to choose
from in both electronic and physical (paper) form,
we limited the source for only electronic collections
and considered only peer-reviewed journals and
conferences. We chose as research source to select
papers from the scientific databases IEEE Explore
and ACM Digital Library (ACM DL) because they
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550

have a solid collection of scientific papers about a
variety of research topics and allow the use of search
interface that simplifies the recovered process. We
also chose as research source the Proceedings of
ICEIS, available in ScitePress Digital Library,
because for several years, it has accepted papers that
cover the business-IT alignment based on quality,
relevance and originality.
Search Keywords: Due to the large number of
papers related to business-IT alignment available in
research sources chosen it is natural to limit the
search using keywords. The main area of research
within which relevant papers may be found
determines the main search keywords as well
‘business-IT alignment’. However, there are
alternative spellings, synonyms and related terms.
For example, in the literature, the alignment has also
been called fit, linkage, integration, harmony (Chan
and Reich, 2007). We decided not to greatly reduce
the scope because our focus is to obtain an overview
of the business-IT alignment research field. So, in
order to use the search interface of the IEEE Explore
and ACM DL, we combined by logical connectives
some keywords related to major terms of the main
area (see Table 2), thus building a search string.
Then, it was used to search for keywords in the
titles, abstract and keywords of the papers contained
in these digital libraries. When the conduction of our
SLR initialized, the advanced search resource of the
ScitePress Digital Library search interface was not
available and, for this reason, it was not possible to
use a logical search string. Alternatively, we used
the string ‘business IT alignment’ looking for its
keywords in the abstracts of papers contained in the
Proceedings of ICEIS.
Table 2: Search string.
Major terms Keywords
IT/IS
IT OR Information Technology OR IS OR
Information System
Business
business OR business objectives OR
business goals OR business strategies OR
strategies OR goals strategies OR strategic
objectives
Alignment
business IT alignment OR alignment OR fit
OR integration OR linkage OR harmony
Period of SLR Execution:
We performed the
search and analysis of the papers through IEEE
Explore and ACM DL over the time span of
February 2014 to June 2015. Subsequently, we
identified the need to extend the coverage of our
SLR and then carry out further searches for papers in
the Proceedings of ICEIS over the time span of
September 2015 to October 2015. In our SLR we
considered to select only those papers that have been
published within timeframe of years 2000-2015.
According to Luftman and Brier (1999), the
importance of alignment has been well known since
late 70s. However, early 2000s the alignment was
defined in an indefinite and vague way (Maes et al.,
2000). We believe that year 2000 can be considered
as a reference point for elaboration and unification
of business-IT alignment research field.
Selection of Papers: After the preliminary
recovery of paper using the search interface of the
digital libraries, we performed two evaluation stages
to ensure the relevance of the papers recovered. In
the first stage, called 1st filter, we evaluated only the
title and the abstract of each paper to accord
inclusion criterion (IC) and exclusion criteria (EC)
(see Table 3) and select papers that would be within
the scope of the research questions. It is common to
find papers with inconsistencies between the abstract
and its full content. Therefore, in the second stage,
called 2nd filter, we realized reading of the full
content of all the selected papers from the 1st filter.
Then, papers were included/excluded according to
the same inclusion/exclusion criteria (see Table 3).
Table 3: Inclusion/exclusion criteria.
IC
Papers that describe issues, which deal with business-
IT alignment.
EC1 Papers that have not been written in English.
EC2
Papers that have not got complete content or are only
accessible through payment.
EC3
Paper is not derived from peer reviewed conferences
or journals.
EC4 Papers that are duplicated.
EC5
Papers whose business-IT alignment issue is not clear
and whose theoretical background is insufficient to
provide their understanding.
EC6 Papers that do not meet the inclusion criterion
Strategy for Extracting Data:
In order to
extract data or answers from papers recovered by
our SLR, we considered each one of the RQ (see
Table 1) as follow.
Regarding RQ1, the motivation is to discover
different research topics that have been used for
addressing issues of business-IT alignment.
Sometimes papers can describe a topic that does not
deal with business-IT alignment straight, but that has
indirect relation to business-IT alignment. In other
cases, it can discuss problems of different research
areas and describe the relation that these problems
have to business-IT alignment issues. For example,
according to Kaidalova and Seigerroth (2012), the
Business-IT Alignment Research Field - A Systematic Literature Review
551

Requirements Engineering is an area that has been
used for addressing issues of business-IT alignment.
Regarding RQ2, the motivation is to investigate
what alignment dimensions are most/least explored
in the business-IT alignment research field to
discover what types of alignment need to be
covered. Based on the categorization proposed by
Chan and Reich (2007), the papers can be classified
in one or more of the following dimensions:
 Strategic: the papers address mainly issues
related to goals, plans, objectives, strategies,
prioritization, investments, governance,
projects, quality and performance;
 Structural: the papers address mainly issues
related to organizational structure, IS
applications and IT infrastructure;
 Social: the papers address mainly issues
related to communication, involvement,
interaction and collaboration;
 Cultural
: the papers address mainly issues
related to styles, behaviour, values and beliefs.
Regarding RQ3, the motivation is to discover
which domains are most/least explored in the
business-IT alignment research field. Based on the
definition for the business-IT alignment by
Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) (see Section 2)
the papers can be classified in one or more of the
following domains:
 Business strategy: the paper addresses mainly
issues related to business scope, business
governance and business competences;
 IT strategy: the paper addresses mainly
issues related to technology scope, IT
governance and systemic competences;
 Business structure: the paper addresses
mainly issues related to administrative
structure, organizational process and skills;
 IT structure: the paper addresses mainly
issues related to IT architecture, IT process
and skills.
Regarding RQ4, the motivation is to determine
what are the business-IT alignment research goals.
An analysis along these goals allows the
determination of where most/least of the research
interest lies. Based on the classification presented by
Oca et al., (2015), the papers can be classified in one
of the following research goals:
 Understanding: the paper investigates
business-IT alignment issues, without
proposing a solution approach;
 Proposal: the paper describes a proposal or
approach for addressing business-IT
alignment issues;
 Evaluation: the paper applies an existing
approach for addressing business-IT
alignment issues in the organizations,
 Improvement: the paper examines how to
improve or extend an existing approach for
addressing business-IT alignment issues.
Regarding RQ5, the motivation is to find the
type of results produced by business-IT alignment
research, assessing the state of the field. Based on
the categorization of results for IS research
presented by March and Smith (1995), the papers
can be classified according to one or more of the
following types of outcomes:
 Knowledge: the papers provide intangible
results related to knowledge, for example,
theoretical definitions, information collected
by questionnaires and results of the evaluating
business-IT alignment in the organizations;
 Model: the paper provides a model as result,
that is, a set of characteristics, and of
relationships between them, which provides a
framework for specifying and evaluating
requirements of business-IT alignment;
 Method: the paper provides a method as
result, that is, a finite sequence of instructions
used to address deficiencies in models and
business-IT alignment issues. Methodology,
technique, process, guidelines and strategy are
considered as method in our SLR.
 Tool: the paper provides a tool as result, that
is, an instrumental item that gives automatic
support to the evaluation or assurance of
business-IT alignment considering different
methods.
Regarding RQ6, the motivation is to reveal
which research methods are most/least used in the
business-IT alignment research area and thereby
evaluate the extension of the scientific validation of
their results. Based on the categorization of research
methods described by Shull et al. (2008) and Genero
et al. (2011), the papers can be classified in one of
the following research methods:

Literature review: the paper describes a
literature review, that is, a non-empirical
method that consists of the review of prior
research to propose general solutions;
 Speculation: the paper describes a proposal or
approach for addressing business IT alignment
issues without presenting any study or
example that would indicate the feasibility of
the proposal and the usefulness of the research
results in practice;
 Example: the paper describes a proposal or
approach for addressing business IT alignment
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552

issues, where its use or application is
illustrated by an example;
 Experiment: the paper presents an
investigation of a testable hypothesis where
one or more independent variables are
manipulated to measure their effect on one or
more dependent variables, checking if a cause-
effect relationship exists between them;
 Case Study: the paper reports the use of a
case study, that is normally aimed at tracking
a specific attribute or establishing
relationships between different attributes with
a level of control lower than in an experiment;
According to Wohlin et al. (2000), case study
is an empirical inquiry that investigates a
contemporary phenomenon within its real-life
context, especially when the boundaries
between phenomenon and context are not
clearly evident;
 Survey: the paper reports the use of a survey,
that is, often an investigation performed in
retrospect, for example, when a tool or method
has been in use for a period of time. The
primary means of gathering qualitative and
quantitative data are interviews or
questionnaires through a sample that is
representative of the population to be studied.
The results from the survey are then analysed
to derive descriptive and explanatory
conclusions and are then generalized to the
population from which the sample was taken
(Shull et al., 2008; Wohlin et al., 2000);
 Empirical/ Non-empirical: research methods
determine to what extent the research results
are supported by empirical or non-empirical
evidence. According to Genero et al. (2011)
the literature review, speculation and example
are considered non-empirical research
methods, whilst the experiment, case study
and survey are considered empirical methods.
5 REPORTING THE RESULTS
As a result of the SLR conduction were selected 65
papers of the IEEE Explore, 19 papers of the ACM
DL and 28 papers of the Proceedings of ICEIS.
Altogether, were selected 112 papers for data
extraction (see Table 4).
The papers selected were published between
2004 and 2015 (see Table 5). As the ScitePress
Digital Library limited the searches from 2004 to
2015, no paper recovered by its search interface was
published in the time frame 2000-2003. Four papers
recovered by IEEE Explore and by ACM DL were
published early 2004. Therefore, they were excluded
in 2nd filter, according to EC2 (see Table 3).
Table 4: Results of selecting papers.
Scientific
Database
Recovered
Papers
Selected Papers
1st filter 2nd filter
IEEE Explore 107 72 65
ACM DL 35 21 19
ICEIS 42 30 28
Total of selected papers for data extraction
112
Table 5: Quantitative results regarding year of publication.
Years
Number of Papers per Year
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
2004 0 3 1 4 3.57
2005 2 2 0 4 3.57
2006 6 0 0 6 5.36
2007 5 1 2 8 7.14
2008 9 1 2 12 10.71
2009 11 3 1 15 13.39
2010 10 1 2 13 11.61
2011 10 2 6 18 16.07
2012 7 2 3 12 10.71
2013 5 2 2 9 8.04
2014 0 2 4 6 5.36
2015 0 0 5 5 4.46
From a temporal point of view, there was an
increasing number of publications between the years
2004 and 2011 (except in 2010). The year of 2011 is
the year with most published papers (16.07%),
followed by 2009 (13.39%), 2010 (11.61%) and
2008 (10.71%). One can also see, according to the
papers selected, in the time frame from 2012 to 2015
there was a decrease in the number of published
papers. As the conduction of the SLR regarding
IEEE Explore and ACM DL was initially in
February 2014, not all conferences held in 2013 and
2014 had their publications indexed in these digital
libraries. This may be the reason for the low number
of papers in these years. Furthermore, this is the
reason for our SLR not to present papers published
in year 2015, regarding IEEE Explore and ACM DL.
The quantitative and qualitative results regarding
each RQ are reported as follow. Note that RQ1,
RQ2, RQ3 and RQ5 are not mutually exclusive.
Therefore, a paper can be classified in one or more
of the possible answers. The summation of the
percentages is therefore over 100%. This is due to
some papers falling into more than one answer.
RQ1 Results. Our SLR identified ten different
topics most used for addressing business-IT
alignment issues in the papers selected (see Table 6).
Business Process Management (BPM) is the most
used topic among all (38.39%), i.e. Lind and
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553

Seigerroth (2010) report a research driven by the
need for knowledge about how to achieve alignment
between business and IT in BPM. Around 36.61% of
the papers use IT Governance as research topic. For
example, Nurcan et al. (2008) identified conceptual
dependencies between business-IT alignment and IT
governance. Around 26.79% of the papers use
Enterprise Architecture (EA). For example, Wang et
al. (2008) proposed a method of business-IT
alignment based on EA. Around 25.89% of the
papers use IS Applications as research topic. For
example, Bartolini et al. (2006) investigate factors
influencing enterprise to improve data quality in IS
application. Around 25.00% of the papers use IT
Service Management. For example, Bartolini et al.
(2006) proposed an application of IT service
management driven by business objectives. Around
23.21% of the papers use some business-IT
performance measurement for addressing business-
IT alignment issues. For example, Silva and Chaix
(2008) presented an approach for identifying and
measuring the alignment level between the business
and IT governance by means of a more
operationalized business and IT process model,
including the key performance indicators (KPI) for
each type of process. Around 14.29% of the papers
use Requirements Engineering. For example,
Bleistein et al. (2005) enhanced a requirements
engineering approach for alignment of IT with
business strategy. Around 13.39% of the papers use
Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) as research
topic, i.e. Choi et al. (2013) evaluated the impact of
SOA implementation on business-IT alignment.
Around 12.5% of the papers use IT Infrastructure
Library (ITIL) as research topic, i.e. Esmaili et al.
(2010). Around 11.61% of the papers use IT
Project/Portfolio, i.e. Rahrovani et al. (2014) .
Table 6: Quantitative results regarding RQ1.
Research topics
Results
Number %
Business Process Management (BPM) 43 38.39
IT Governance 41 36.61
Enterprise Architecture (EA) 30 26.79
Information System Applications 29 25.89
IT Services Management (ITSM) 28 25.00
Business-IT Performance Measurement 26 23.21
Requirements Engineering 16 14.29
Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) 15 13.39
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 14 12.50
IT Project / Portfolio 13 11.61
RQ2 Results.
The results for RQ2 (see Table 7)
showed that all papers present strategic dimension of
the business-IT alignment. For example, Iizuka et al.
(2011) proposed a framework for effective IT
investment from the perspective of business-IT
alignment. Around 75.00% of the papers present
structural dimension. For example, Esmaili et al.
(2010) investigated the business-IT alignment in the
ITIL perspective. Around 49.11% of the papers
present social dimension. For example, Saptadi et al.
(2012) developed a conceptual model for business-
IT alignment that explore the competitive priorities
and relationships involving IT staff, consultants and
owner of the small and medium enterprises. Around
30.36% of the papers present cultural dimension. For
example, El-Mekawy and Rusu (2011) conducted a
case study in a multinational organization to
investigate the organizational culture impact on
business-IT alignment.
Table 7: Quantitative results regarding RQ2.
Alignment
Dimensions
Number of Papers
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
Strategic 65 19 28 112 100.00
Structural 48 13 23 84 75.00
Social 37 9 9 55 49.11
Cultural 25 5 4 34 30.36
RQ3 Results. The results for RQ3 (see Table 8)
showed that about 84.82% of the papers address
issues related to business strategy domain. For
example, Qiu and Li (2009) conducted a study for
ending users' perceptions of business strategic
factors among different IS/IT contexts. Around
64.29% of the papers comprise IT strategy domain.
For example, Daher et al. (2013) evaluated value-
based objectives for developing business and IT
strategies. Around 70.54% of the papers have
coverage for business structure domain. For
example, Wang et al. (2008) proposed a method of
business and IT alignment based on Enterprise
Architecture. Around 73.21% of the papers address
issues related to IT structure domain. For example,
Qin et al. (2010) studied the IT application valuation
in business-IT alignment.
Table 8: Quantitative results regarding RQ3.
Business and IT
Domains
Number of Papers
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
Business Strategy 53 14 28 95 84.82
IT Strategy 45 11 16 72 64.29
Business Structure 44 14 21 79 70.54
IT Structure 47 16 12 75 73.21
RQ4 Results. The results for RQ4 (see Table 9)
showed that about 15.18% of the papers present
researches aimed at the understanding of the
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business-IT alignment without proposing a solution
approach. For example, Doumi et al. (2011)
presented a state of art and a comparison between
some business-IT alignment approaches. Around
63.39% of the papers describe a proposal or
approach for addressing business-IT alignment
issues. For example, Becker et al. (2008) presented
an approach to support the strategic alignment of
software process improvement programs. Around
11.61% of the papers present an evaluation of the
business-IT alignment in the organizations as
research goal. For example, Silvius and Waal (2010)
evaluated the business-IT alignment maturity in
Dutch educational organizations using the Strategic
Alignment Maturity Model (SAMM) proposed by
Luftman (2000). Around 9.82% of the papers have
as research goal to improve an existing approach for
addressing business-IT alignment issues. For
example, El-Mekawy et al. (2012) extended the
SAMM from organizational culture perspective.
Table 9: Quantitative results regarding RQ4.
Research
Goals
Number of Papers
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
Understanding 10 6 1 17 15.18
Proposal 40 10 21 71 63.39
Evaluation 9 2 2 13 11.61
Improvement 6 1 4 11 9.82
RQ5 Results. The results for RQ5 (see Table 10)
showed that about 26.79% of the papers provide
‘knowledge’ as research outcome. For example,
Schlosser et al. (2012) proposed an integration of the
alignment dimensions used by this paper (see RQ2)
into three distinct dimensions: human, social and
intellectual. Around 48.21% of the papers provide a
model as research result, such as Saptadi et al.
(2012) that proposed a business-IT alignment
conceptual model. Around 23.21% of the papers
provide a method as research result, as presented in
Wang et al. (2008). Around 8.04% of the papers
provide a tool as research result. For example, Lee-
Klenz et al. (2010) provide a tool for sourcing
business-IT aligned e-services.
Table 10: Quantitative results regarding RQ5.
Type of
Outcomes
Number of Papers
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
Knowledge 19 8 3 30 26.79
Model 30 5 19 54 48.21
Method 13 6 7 26 23.21
Tool 6 1 2 9 8.04
RQ6 reSults.
The results for RQ6 (see Table 11)
showed that about 9.82% of the papers use a
literature review as research method, such as in
Ullah and Lai (2013) and Walentowitz (2012). The
same percentage of the papers (9.82%) use
‘speculation’ (see Section 4) as research method, as
presented in Tapia (2009). Around 25.89% of the
papers illustrate through examples the use or
application of a proposal for addressing business-IT
alignment issues. For instance, Chen (2008) briefly
discuss three examples showing how different
modules of their approach are activated in response
to different change events. Around 3.57% of the
papers present an experiment as research method.
For example, Barros et al. (2014) conducted an
experiment with specialists to analyze their
approach proposed named StrAli-BPM from the
standpoint of the level of contribution, practical
applicability, effectiveness, viability, usability of the
prototypes and limitations. Around 36.61% of the
papers conduct a case study as research method, as
presented in El-Mekawy and Rusu (2011). Around
14.29% of the papers present a survey as research
method. For example, Silvius and Waal (2010)
undertake a survey of the students and employees to
assess the alignment maturity levels in Dutch
educational organizations of the Netherlands.
Almost half of the papers selected described a non-
empirical method to validate their research outcomes
(51 or 45.54%) whilst the rest (61 or 54.46%)
described empirical research method. The most
widely used empirical research method is the study
case (36.61%) and the most widely used non-
empirical research method is the example (25.89%).
Table 11: Quantitative results regarding RQ6.
Research
Methods
Number of Papers
Total %
IEEE ACM ICEIS
Non-empirical 23 9 19 51 45.54
Literature Review 7 3 1 11 9.82
Speculation 4 2 5 11 9.82
Example 12 4 13 29 25.89
Empirical 42 10 9 61 54.46
Experiment 3 0 1 4 3.57
Case Study 27 7 7 41 36.61
Survey 12 3 1 16 14.29
6 DISCUSSIONS
Regarding RQ1, the main results indicate that the
researches on business-IT alignment has explored
strongly topics, that although not all have direct
relation, they can be used efficiently to propose
business-IT alignment solutions. The current state of
this research field indicates wide coverage for
different topics and different viewpoints have been
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used to propose business-IT alignment solutions. We
believe it is possible to see new directions to
research field through interaction and more
comprehension between these topics.
Regarding RQ2, the main results indicate that the
researches have little investigated the cultural
dimension. Due to its recognized importance in the
organizational environment, it can be better explore
and a new research direction can be to extend
existing approaches to contemplate these dimensions
or adopt them in new proposal. Additionally,
although many researches address the structural and
social dimensions, there are still gaps that can be
filled and other research opportunities may arise
from the further investigation on these dimensions.
Regarding RQ3, the main results indicate that the
IT strategy, business strategy, IT structure and
business structure have been explored in a balanced
way. One can also see, currently most researches
refer to the model proposed by Henderson and
Venkatraman (1993). Even though, the business-IT
alignment research field has explored the IT strategy
but the other domains. Generally, the researches
mainly concern in how to formulate the business
strategy. A new research direction can be better
explore how to formulate the IT strategy, so that it
influences the business strategy and vice versa.
Regarding RQ4, the main results indicate that the
researchers' interest lies mainly on describing a new
approach for addressing business-IT alignment
issues. Due to this reason, currently the research
field provides a large number of similar business-IT
alignment approaches. Consequently, the research
goals ‘evaluation’, that consists of applying an
existing approach for addressing business-IT
alignment issues has been little used. We recognize
that the great variety of contexts and adverse
situations may require special attention to the
development of the approaches. However, we
question whether most of the time it is not possible
to take advantage of characteristics of the existing
approaches to address well-known business-IT
alignment issues. When feasible, researchers must
focus on improving or extending an existing
approach rather than excessively worry about the
development of the new solutions, generally
unnecessary. We also incentive that more papers
describe how the evaluation of the business-IT
alignment has been accomplished.
Regarding RQ5, the main results indicate that by
far the most common type of research outcome is the
model. The second most common outcome, but far
behind models, is that one which produces new
knowledge. Closely, following knowledge and in
third place are methods (in our SLR, methodology,
technique, process, guidelines and strategy are also
considered methods). In the last place, produced by
a minimum amount of researches reported in the
papers, are the tools. Then, it is possible to perceive
that current state of the business-IT alignment
research field is mainly characterized by theoretical
and conceptual results (models and knowledge)
rather than results with more pragmatic (methods
and tools). We recognized the importance of
researches that propose new business-IT alignment
conceptual models, but it is desirable that future
researches focus on producing more pragmatic
business-IT alignment research outcomes for
inclusive operationalize (provide a finite sequence of
instructions of use) some existing models overly
theoretical. Additionally, considering this same
purpose, it is essential that the researchers be
engaged in developing new tools to give automatic
support to the evaluation or assurance of business-IT
alignment considering different methods.
Regarding RQ6, the results indicate that the case
study is the most used method to empirically
validate the research outcomes identified in the
papers selected. However, although we recognized
that it is the most adequate method to investigate a
contemporary phenomenon within its real-life
context, in some situations it was possible that the
papers establish relationships between different
attributes with a higher level of control, such as in an
experiment. In order to increase the level of
scientific rigor and evidence in the business-IT
alignment research field further researches should
make more use of the experiments as empirical
research method. Furthermore, the finding that the
rate of the research results in empirical and non-
empirical presents a balanced distribution could be
interpreted as an indication that the business-IT
alignment research field can still need to gain
maturity. Indeed, in our SLR we detected that there
is a great number of papers that propose new
approaches to address business-IT alignment issues,
such as models and methods, without determining
the empirical validity of the usefulness of these
results in practice. Like this, a considerable amount
of papers describe a proposal or approach for
addressing business-IT alignment issues without
presenting any study or example (speculation). The
same way, other papers illustrated the use or
applications of this approach exclusively by an
example or simulation. These gaps must be filled in
further investigation, increasing the level of
scientific validation of the proposed results.
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7 CONCLUSIONS
This paper reports the performing of a SLR whose
main contribution was to provide an overview of the
current status of development of the business-IT
alignment research field in the last 15 years and its
possible further directions.
The main threat to the validity is the bias in the
selection of publication. We used only three
scientific databases that cover peer-reviewed
journals and conferences, including the ICEIS.
Nevertheless, the scope covered by them is
sufficiently wide to attain reasonable completeness
in the business-IT research field. Furthermore, this
threat to the validity was reduced because we used a
rigorous selection and two evaluate stages to ensure
the relevance of the papers selected.
We hope that this paper can help students and
researchers increase their knowledge in business-IT
alignment and, more than that, help them improve
the maturity of the development of the research
field, reducing the gaps reported. As future work we
suggest investigate what benefits and challenges are
inherent to the research topics identified in our SLR,
when they are jointly applied in the context of
business-IT alignment.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the support granted
by FAPEAM (project 582/2014), CAPES and IFRR.
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