Analysis On Business And IT Alignment And Alignment Degree

The 21st century is the era of information economy and knowledge-based economy. Market competition has been changed to the competition of speed, information and knowledge, while the scope of competition also has extended from region to the whole world. The world economy is in the increasingly information-oriented development, information technology (IT) and its industry has become the world's new economic growth point. Today, more and more companies are finding that IT has gradually become part of operational activities. However, the overwhelming majority of enterprises are faced with such trouble:At present, the combination degree of business and IT is far from their expectations. Under the intense competition and rapidly changing environment, how to effectively promote business and IT alignment in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage is a problem for business managers. The paper is about to set enterprise business and IT alignment as the object of study, to discuss the construct and conceptual model of business and IT alignment, and its impact on competitive advantages in enterprise through the empirical study, and to analyze the level of IT alignment degree. The results give suggestions about how to realize business and IT alignment, which will promote acquirement and maintenance of competitive advantages.Firstly, based on the literature IT alignment and competitive advantages in China and abroad, the paper built and advanced conceptual model of business and IT alignment which describe how rational and social dimension of IT alignment influence competitive advantages in enterprise. Then, through questionnaire survey, scale design, data collection and analysis (structural equation model), empirical study of the theoretical model was made to verify the rationality of the model and the relationship between alignment and competitive advantage. Finally, this paper came up with business and IT alignment assessment, IT alignment degree and alignment evolution.The study results of this paper are mainly as following:(1) built and advanced conceptual model of business and IT alignment which describe how rational and social dimension of IT alignment influence competitive advantages in enterprise, reflecting the contents and operation mechanism of alignment completely; (2) made empirical study of the theoretical model to verify the rationality of the model and the relationship between alignment and competitive advantage; (3) came up with business and IT alignment assessment, IT alignment degree and alignment evolution and made construction to enterprises'informationization.