Alignment of the IT Function with the Enterprise:
Towards a Model of Antecedents

Carol V. Brown, Sharon L. Magill

Management Information Systems Quarterly
Volume18, Number 4, pp. ??.

Abstract

Identifying the best way to organize the IS functions within an enterprise has been a critical IS management issue since the mid-1980s. Yet to date, MIS researchers have offered little empirical evidence on which to base guidelines for the practitioner. This study seeks to explain a firm's IS organization design decision for a decentralized, centralized, or "hybrid" locus of responsibility from an expanded set of environmental, overall organizational, and IS-specific antecedants as well as a larger concept of organizational alignment. Potential antecedents are selected from prior contingency research and the IS literature; other variables emerge from the data collection. Data collected via on-site interviews from IS and general managers in six multi-divisional firms, paired by industry, confirm that centralized, decentralized, and hybrid IS structures exist -- but often not in ''pure'' form -- and that industry type is not a strong predictor. Data was also collected via survey form on the importance of potential antecedents for a recent IS design change in each firm. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data, four configurations are discussed; patterns of antecedents that are associated with (1) highly centralized or (2) highly decentralized IS structures; and patterns of antecdents that explain a firm's choice to (3) decentralize of (4) recentralize systems development and application planning functions in particular. A model based on these configurations is then proposed. The article concludes with implications for researchers and practioners .