Overview
Although a lot of research have been done in the area of IS and business strategy alignment, there is a dearth of rigorous research work on this particular instrument development. This conclusion can be drawn from the following observations.
First, in general, the construct is defined in an indefinite and vague way, if at all! Many publications simply avoid any pinning down of the concept, or fall back to tautological definitions. Luftman et al., e.g., define alignment as “the extent to which the IS strategy supports, and is supported by, the business strategy” (Luftman, et. al., 1993, p.204). This indefiniteness is continuously repeated with only slight alterations.
Second, no solid theoretical foundation exists to guide the study of IS and Business Strategy Alignment, though some kinds of insights are already obtained from the related research, such as: IS and business strategy alignment covers several different aspects: the dimensions of the nature of integration, of timing, of personnel, and of content, etc.
Finally, the two
key references of instrument development this study found and examined
skipped the scale development and directly came into items level and failed
to provide the value of validity and reliability, whereas a lot of other
authors (eg. Coakley, et al., 1996 and Ciborra, 1997) questioned the measurability
of the degree of alignment.