The implementation success of healthcare information systems: A business-IT alignment perspective

Abstract

Alignment has been considered as a multi-dimension concept such as strategic alignment and social alignment. Besides, alignment is also recognized as a dynamic concept, which means it is always an ongoing process. Drawing on these two perspectives, we suggest that alignment could be achieved by various implementations, including IT strategy-driven implementation and business-driven implementation that could happen in the same organization, but in different periods of time. We also propose that social alignment is not simply one of the antecedents of strategic alignment, but is embedded in the whole process of implementation to help achieve strategic alignment. To integrate these two sets of findings, we further propose a process model about how the process of IT implementation and social alignment facilitate the alignment between organization's business strategy and IT strategy to illustrate the underlying mechanism.