Research On The Affect Mechanism Of Innovation Culture On IT-Business Alignment

The rapid development of information technology such as mobile,cloud,platform and so on provides new opportunities and challenges for the enterprise survival and development.More and more enterprises hope to improve organizational performance through applying IT deeply.The depth of IT and business alignment would create strategic business value.However,the level of IT-business alignment is needed to improve under the background of emerging technology for China's enterprises.It is a process that the new technology is embedded in the organization for IT-business alignment,not only involves a full range of change from strategy to process,but also involves member's attitude and behavior to new things.Thus,the effect of IT application has a close relationship with its characteristics of innovation culture.So this paper aims to research on the affect mechanism of innovation culture on IT-business alignment from the corporate value perspective on the basis of existing research.This paper foucus on the following issues:(1)The concept connotation and driving factors of IT-business alignment.(2)What is the critical path that innovation culture influences IT-business alignment?(3)What changes will take place for the path that innovation culture influence IT-business alignment in different situation?This paper put forward the concept of IT-business alignment on the basis of existing research and new characteristics given by the emerging technology,and then IT-business alignment is divided into three dimensions based on hierarchy view.Aimming at constructing a theoretical model to explain how innovative culture influences on IT-business alignment,fist of all,the driving factor framework of IT-business alignment is built up using meta-analysis.Secondly,on the basis of defining the concept and the dimension of innovation culture,this paper discusses the general path which the innovation culture plays a role in the organization through the theoretical analysis and literature research.Next,this paper put forward two mediating variables,IT governance and the social dimension by the logic of "culture-institution design-result" and "culture-behavior-result" and analyzes the relationship between them.Finally,this paper studies the moderating effect of organizational structure and institutional environment.At this point we open the "black box" of how innovation culture influences IT-business alignment.In order to verify the correctness of theoretical model,we put the enterprise as the research object whose informatization experience is more than five years,and core business areas has realized informationization,such as purchasing,production,research and development,etc.Empirical data is collected respectively from cities whose institutional environment is either perfect or imperfect.Two questionnaires are collected from each enterprise,eventually received 396 valid questionnaires from 198 enterprises,and the statistical hypothesis was analyzed by multiple regression analysis,multiple group analysis and moderating effect analysis.According to the empirical data analysis,the conclusions of this research are as follows:(1)Innovation culture has a positive impact on infrastructure alignment,process alignment and strategic alignment of IT and business.(2)Innovation culture has a positive impact on IT governance organization mechanism and relationship mechanism,which play mediational role in the relationship between innovation culture and IT-business alignment.(3)Innovation culture has a positive impact on social dimension,which play mediational role in the relationship between innovation culture and IT-business alignment.(4)All the dimensions of IT governance have a positive impact on social dimension.(5)The influence path of innovation culture on IT-business alignment has significant differences in the organic and the mechanical organization structure.(6)The institutional environment plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between innovation culture and IT governance/IT-business alignment.This paper aims to reveal the inner mechanism of how innovation culture helps enterprises to realize the business value of IT.The innovative significances of the research are mainly embodied in the following aspects.(1)This paper proposes the concept of IT-business alignment on the basis of the existing research by integrating the new characteristics of IT-business alignment given by the rapid development of emerging technology,and establishes the driving factor framework of IT-industry alignment by using meta-analysis.It is helpful to make up for the deficiency of relevant theoretical research.Although scholars in information systems field have recognized the importance of IT-business alignment to the competitive advantage of enterprises,they have not yet formed a unified theoretical understanding of IT-alignment.On the basis of existing research,this paper defines the concept of IT-business alignment based upon new characteristics of IT-business alignment under the background of emerging technology.On that basis,IT-business alignment is divided into three dimensions from the hierarchical perspective,which are infrastructure alignment,process alignment,and strategic alignment.At the same time,this paper establishes the driving factor framework of IT-business alignment by using meta-analysis.This will help to make up for the fuzziness of IT-business alignment concept boundary and lay a theoretical foundation for further research on IT-business alignment.(2)This paper proposes the influence mechanism model which posits IT governance and social dimensions as mediating variables in linking enterprise innovation culture and IT-business alignment and verifies the correctness of the model by empirical test.In this way,we open the "black box" of the influence path of innovation culture on IT-business alignment and fill in gaps between them.At present,the research on innovation culture mainly focuses on its influence on the organizational outcome variables,such as performance,while the research on the influence on other important process variables is rare.In the context of enterprise informatization,a few scholars have discussed the relationship between culture and organizational IT application effect,but the "black box" of the influence path of innovation culture on IT-business alignment has not been opened yet.Based on the theoretical logic of "culture-institution design-result" and "culture-behavior-result",this paper illustrates the influence path of innovation culture on IT-business alignment with two mediating variables including IT governance and social dimension.The research conclusions expand the research perspective of IT-business alignment and make up the deficiency of theoretical research on IT deep application in the current cultural perspective.(3)This paper systematically study the influence of IT governance on the working relationship and interaction of IT and business department in social dimension.It would help reveal the path of the innovation culture influence IT-business alignment more deeply and reveal the influence mechanism of IT governance on IT-business alignment from behavioral perspective.Existing research only focuses on the influence of IT governance on IT-business alignment from rational(knowledge)dimension and neglects the impact of IT governance on the relationship between IT and business department in social dimension.On the basis of the theoretical derivation,this paper proposes that IT governance mechanism of organization,proces,and relationship will effectively promote the level of commitment between IT and business departments for each other's goals,vision and mission through effectively guiding,restricting and motivating the communication and interaction.Then this paper makes an empirical test to verify the research hypothesis.By excavating the influence of mediation variables between innovation culture and IT-business alignment,this paper reveals influence path of the innovation culture on IT-business alignment more deeply.At the same time,from the perspectives of behavior,this paper influence mechanism of IT governance on IT-business alignment.(4)This paper compares the differences of influence paths which innovation culture on IT-business alignment in the organic and mechanical organization structure,as well as the moderating effect which the institutional environment has on the relationship between innovation culture and IT-business alignment/ IT governance/social dimension,that would help to understand the relationship between innovation culture and IT-business alignment deeply and enrich the theory of contextual management.The existing research has paid little attention to the role of moderating variables when discussing the impact of innovation culture.Accordingly,this paper studies that organization structure and institutional environment have moderating effect in the model.There are significent differences in influence paths which innovation culture on IT-business alignment.At the same time,institutional environment has negative effects on the relationship between innovation culture and IT-business alignment/ IT governance.The research on moderating effect can not only help to explain the applicability of the model more accurately,but also expand the application field of contingency theory.(5)The inspiration and suggestion of enterprise management practice proposed in this paper provide better theoretical basis and practical value for promoting the construction of innovation culture and IT-business alignment deeply.Although the existing research has realized that the main hindering factors in process of businesses using IT to obtain competitive advantage are organization characteristics and staff level rather than technical factors,suggestions of how to use deepening IT applications and improve organization performance have not been given yet.Through theoretical analysis and empirical test,this paper explores the influence path of innovation culture on IT-business alignment,and analyzes the enlightenment for the enterprise management practice brought by research conclusion under the background of emerging technology and open innovation.The research conclusion provides theoretical basis and practical value for enterprises to promote the level of IT-business alignment through promoting cultural construction according to their actual situation and external environmental characteristics.