Measuring the alignment of information technology strategy in small-to-medium sized organisations that use accounting packages

[摘要] The alignment of information technology (IT) strategies with organisational factors has been acritical management issue since 1980s. Studies conducted to date have however focused onalignment in large sized organisations, and little has been done to assist the small-to-mediumsized organisations to successfully align their software package implementations. There is alsolack of comprehensive frameworks that these organisations could rely on to predict, or audit, theoutcome of their effort to implement these packages.In this research, a framework was developed to guide the measurement of the extent to whichsmall-to-medium sized organisations aligned their IT strategies with selected organisationalfactors during the implementation of accounting packages. These factors are: the businessobjectives; structural factors; social factors; cultural factors; and information system factors.These were selected because they influence the success of IT implementation in small-to-mediumsized organisations.There were 155 participants in the study from 75 different organisations. These were surveyedusing a questionnaire and telephone interviews. The results were first analysed to determine theconsistency between the IT strategy and each of the above selected organisational factors (thedimensions of alignment).Further analysis was then conducted to test a structural model that examined the relationshipsbetween the dimensions of alignment, IT strategy alignment and the success of the accountingpackage implementation. (The construct IT strategy alignment refers to the overall consistency ofthe choices or decisions adopted in the implementation of the accounting package with the aboveselected organisational factors).The findings indicate that small-to-medium sized organisations do not align their informationtechnology strategies with the selected organisational factors, except for the cultural factors. Itwas also revealed that each dimension of alignment has a positive and significant influence onthe IT strategy alignment, and the IT strategy alignment also has a positive and significantinfluence on the success of the accounting package implementation.The findings emphasise the need for small-to-medium sized organisations to ensure that ITstrategies are consistent with at least all the above organisational factors if successful accountingpackage implementations are to be achieved. Recommendations for researchers and practitionersare provided in the last chapter of this thesis.

[发布机构] University of the Free State