Aligning Strategy and Information and Communication Technology in Public Organizations: A Critical Management Challenge - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 144

goals, objectives, and/or structure of one component are consistent with the needs,
demands, goals, objectives, and/or structure of another component” (p. 40). Hence,
by embellishing the essence of the viewpoint of Nadler and Tushman and distill-
ing essential themes made apparent by earlier definitions shown above, we define
strategic alignment to mean “the extent to which the ICT strategy is consistent
with the organizational strategy by way of supporting major business priorities and
advancing the long term organizational direction based on the various business and
ICT management levels working congruently to generate real business value.”
7.3.2 Challenges
The scholarly work heretofore has revealed many reasons for why strategic align-
ment persistently challenges organizations and management to generate real busi-
ness value from ICT investments. By examining some of these studies (Luftman
& Ben-Zvi, 2010a, 2010b; Luftman & Brier, 1999; Luftman & Kempaiah, 2007,
2008; Luftman, Kempaiah, & Rigoni, 2009), it was possible to distil the high-
level reasons to explain the challenges embedded in strategic alignment, and
these included the following: the inability of business and ICT executives to work
together by way of cocreation, the lack of an interdependent enterprise-wide view,
the lack of effective strategic planning that sets out a vision for the role of ICT,
an underperforming role enacted by senior executives in support of ICT-enabling
possibilities, the failure to position ICT as a business investment, and insufficient
and inadequate levels of ICT management capability and resource capacity. These
issues, among others, are discussed more fully throughout this chapter.
7.3.3 Benefits
Many different types of benefits can stem from strategic alignment efficacy that
have the potential to impact on organizational performance, and these include ser-
vice improvement (Sabherwal & Chan, 2001; Wang & Tai, 2003); adaptation to
potential risk situations (Chague, 1996; Gupta, Karimi, & Somers, 1997); leverage
efficiency, stability, and economies of scale (Gupta et al., 1997; Oh & Pinsonneault,
2007; Sabherwal & Chan, 2001); ability to overcome environmental uncertainties
(Croteau & Bergeron, 2001; Huber, 1984); support of the control and delegation of
decision authority (Tavakolian, 1989); greater coordination and integration of com-
plex goals, functions, and relationships by facilitating a higher degree of formality
and specialization (Leifer, 1988); satisfying agency operations and individual user
needs more robustly and completely (Huang & Hu, 2007); improvement of coop-
eration among system partners (Tallon, 2007-2008; Wang & Tai, 2003); driv-
ing innovation (Raskino, 2011; Silvius, 2010); providing of unique administration
competencies (Chan, Huff, Barclay, & Copeland, 1997); and facilitation of greater
knowledge exchange (Hsu, Hu, & Chen, 2006). On the basis of empirical find-
ings, no more than 15% of organizations can claim to fully maximize the benefits