BUSINESS-IT ALIGNMENT WITHIN THE FINANCIAL SECTOR: A CASE-STUDY OF ENTANGLEMENT IN PRACTICE

摘要

Entanglement in practice is a particular perspective on technology and perceives human practices and IT interrelated. How business-IT alignment is perceived from this research perspective is explored with this interpretive case-study within the financial sector. Employees from different departments and different hierarchy levels in one company were interviewed. The amassed qualitative data was analyzed through a coding approach and conceptualizations were derived. The study identified institutionalized features, change legacies and communication as influential for business-IT alignment. Researchers perceive a tripartite formation composed of human, business and IT, when they explore business-IT alignment. Aligned business and IT may serve as scaffolding. The paper indicates that the organizational state of business-IT alignment is important to distinguish the respective need of reflexive capabilities of human actors. Large tensions between business and IT require extensive reflexive capabilities, when actors need to elicit more carefully the respective requirements in a given situation.