1) "Strategic Alignment: Leverage Information Technology for transforming organization" by J C Henderson and N Venkartraman 1993
Subject:
In Lect 4 - Which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best? and why?
Response:
For the question which alignment strategy in SAM model is the best, I suggest that there is no best alignment perspective. There is only the most suitable alignment perspective for different environment.
The 4 alignment strategy in SAM model
Strategy Execution
This perspective is the classical, hierarchical view of strategic management. The business strategy is a business driver of both the organizational infrastructure and processes, and IS infrastructure and processes. The top Management formulates the strategy. The performance criteria is the cost/service center.
Technology transformation
This perspective also views the business strategy as the driver but the IT strategy can support the chosen business strategy. The top management provides the technology vision to make the IT strategy to support the business strategy. And the IT manager is the technology architect. This perspective seeks to identify the best possible IT competencies, and Performance in term of IT market position is assessed by a benchmarking approach
Competitive Potential
This perspective is to allow adaptation of business strategy via emerging IT capabilities. Therefore, this perspective does not consider the business strategy is given. It seeks to identify the best set of strategic options through IT. In this perspective, the IT strategy is a business driver. The top Management provides the business vision. Business performance is assessed by business / product leadership such as market share, growth, and new product introduction.
Service Level
This alignment perspective is to ensure the effective use of IT resources. In this perspective, the IT strategy is a business driver. The role of business strategy is indirect. Performance is assessed by the level of customer satisfaction
Which alignment perspective is the best?
In my opinion, no perspective is the best perspective. It depends on many factors. For example, leadership means the ability of the director of a company. It is the most important factor to determine that if a company is suitable to apply the "Strategy Execution" alignment approach. Clearly a company with a bad leader will have a poor business strategy. Moreover, the culture of a company is an important factor too. For example, if the company staff’s values are that IT is only to assist the operation of company. It is likely that the IT strategy would not be the business driver of the company.
Also, If a company treats the customer-supplier relationship as the most important value of the company, the company will do the best to improve their service quality. For servicing industry, the service quality determine their success . So it is the best for them to apply the "Service Level" alignment approach.
Furthermore, the “Technology transformation” alignment approach is not constrained by the current organization design. So when thinking if a company should adopt this approach or not, we should think what’s the company product, is the company use most of the resources to improve technology. If the answer is yes, “Technology transformation” alignment approach is suitable to the company.
At the end, The “competitive Potential” approach is suitable for companies which face a competitive environment, as it seeks to identify the best set of strategic options. It would create competitive advantage to the business.
Conculson
Each alignment strategy has its own merits. There is no best alignment perspective. The most important thing for us is to think about the strength of each alignment perspective and choose a perspective which fits the company situation.
