The Translated Strategic Alignment Model: A Practice-Based ...

Systèmes d'Information et Management

Volume 18 | Issue 2 Article 3

2013

The Translated Strategic Alignment Model: APractice-Based PerspectiveIsabelle WalshRouen Business School, France, [email protected]

Alexandre RenaudFrance Business School, Tours, France, [email protected]

Michel KalikaParis-Dauphine Univeristy, France, [email protected]

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Recommended CitationWalsh, Isabelle; Renaud, Alexandre; and Kalika, Michel (2013) "The Translated Strategic Alignment Model: A Practice-BasedPerspective," Systèmes d'Information et Management: Vol. 18 : Iss. 2 , Article 3.Available at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/sim/vol18/iss2/3

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N° 2 – Vol. 18 – 2013 37

The Translated Strategic AlignmentModel: A Practice-Based Perspective

Isabelle WALSH*, Alexandre RENAUD** & Michel KALIKA****Rouen Business School

**France Business School – Campus de Tours***Université Paris-Dauphine

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose to revisit the concept of strategic alignment in a practice-basedperspective. We propose new insights on this concept which has mostly been studied in the li-terature through Henderson and Venkatraman’s strategic alignment model (1993). In agrounded approach, we study practitioners’ daily practices through the in-depth investigationof three corporate cases and interviews with six consultants specialized in the managementof information systems (IS). We use actor-network theory as a theoretical framework to helpus make sense of and interpret our data. We propose a new, conceptual, non-functionalistmodel, which integrates several streams of literature: the translated strategic alignment model(TSAM). This model may serve as a help to drive toward a critical level of alignment that ap-pears as necessary to clear the path toward competitive advantage.

Keywords: Actor-Network Theory, IT needs, Users’ needs, Strategic alignment, Strategy-as-Practice.

RÉSUMÉ

Dans cet article nous proposons de revisiter le concept d’alignement stratégique dans uneapproche par les pratiques. Nous proposons de nouvelles idées sur ce concept qui a été majo-ritairement étudié dans la littérature au travers du modèle d’alignement stratégique proposépar Henderson et Venkatraman (1993). Dans une approche enracinée, nous étudions lespratiques quotidiennes de praticiens au travers de l’étude en profondeur de trois cas d’entre-prises et d’entretiens avec six consultants spécialisés en gestion des systèmes d’information(SI). Nous utilisons la théorie de l’acteur-réseau comme cadre théorique afin de nous aider àfaire sens de nos données et à les interpréter. Nous proposons un nouveau modèle conceptuel,non-fonctionnaliste et qui intègre plusieurs courants de la littérature : le modèle d’alignementstratégique traduit (TSAM). Ce modèle peut aider à atteindre un niveau critique d’aligne-ment qui apparaît comme nécessaire pour ouvrir le chemin menant à l’avantage compétitif.

Mots-clés : Alignement stratégique, Besoins technologiques, Besoins utilisateurs, Stratégiepar les pratiques, Théorie de l’acteur-réseau.

ARTICLE DE RECHERCHE

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INTRODUCTION

The alignment between business andIS strategy has long been consideredessential in organizations to help drivetoward competitive advantage. It hasgiven rise over the last three decades toa very rich corpus of works. Within thiscorpus, Henderson and Venkatraman’sseminal model (1989, 1991, and 1993)has remained to this day the modelmost often applied in corporations andmost used in the literature (Avison,Jones, Powell and Wilson, 2004). Thisstrategic alignment model (SAM) is an-chored in the strategic perspective de-veloped in the 80’s; it is based on as-sumptions which perhaps could bequestioned and challenged in order topropose possible alternatives. Thismodel, grounded in a managerial visionthat is thought out and planned, impliesthat a “fit” between its four main com-ponents (business strategy, business in-frastructure, IS strategy and IS infras-tructure) should lead to betterperformance (Croteau, Raymond andBergeron, 2001; Jaziri and Kalika,2006). It takes into account the impacton firm performance of objective ele-ments e.g., cost-related issues (Won-seok and Pinsonneault, 2007). Howev-er, it does on the whole neglect thesocial aspects, the users’ interpretationsof the information technologies (IT)that they use and their impacts on per-formance (Ciborra, 1997).

In the last couple of decades theStrategy-as-Practice (SasP) school ofthought has emerged; it views strategyas a social practice and proposes to re-consider strategic management modelsthrough a practice perspective (Jarz-abakowski and Paul Spee, 2006). In this

school of thought, IT are enacted (Or-likowski, 2000) through their actualuse, which results from drifts, improvi-sations and ‘bricolage’ (Ciborra, 1997;1999). The alignment between businessstrategy and IT strategy does not alwaysresult in the expected levels of perfor-mance, as this depends greatly on theusers, their interpretations, their ap-praisal of IT events and resulting adap-tations (Elie-dit-Cosaque and Straub,2010), their IT acculturation and theway their IT needs are taken into ac-count and fulfilled (Bragge and Merisa-lo-Rantanen, 2009; Gallivan and Keill,2003; Walsh, Kefi and Baskerville,2010). Even when all known parame-ters are taken into account, improvisa-tions often lead to unexpected eventsthat make performance unpredictable,through processes that are complexand far from linear. Therefore researchshould keep aiming for a conceptualunderstanding of the day-to-day com-plex reality of practitioners in organiza-tions.

Many terms are used in the literatureto describe an alignment (Avison et al.,2004; Chan, Huff, Barclay andCopeland, 1997) e.g., “fit” or “consis-tence”, “integration”, “coherence” or“linkage”, or “harmony”. One alsofinds diverse definitions of the conceptof alignment itself. It has been definedas a “process” (Burn, 1997) or as an“outcome” (Broadbent and Weill, 1991;Chan and Reich, 2007; Reich and Ben-basat, 2000). In our work, we need togo beyond this dichotomy since we un-derstand strategic alignment as includ-ing both the process that aims at ITsupporting business and being support-ed by it, and the outcome of this pro-cess. This approach allows us to inves-


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THE TRANSLATED STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT MODEL: A PRACTICE-BASED PERSPECTIVE

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tigate this phenomenon in its complex-ity, without distinguishing between thepractices which might eventually leadto alignment from alignment itself.Adopting a grounded approach to day-to-day organizational practices, we aimto answer the following research ques-tion: How do some organizationsachieve strategic alignment in practice?

Hence, the research issue investigatedin the present article is the manner inwhich strategic alignment emerges (ornot) in practice. We propose a criticalreading of SAM’s premises and assump-tions. We integrate several streams ofliterature in order to better understand,explain and extend the concept ofstrategic alignment ‘in action’. We showthat, within the context of an IT project,IS strategic alignment in today’s firmsmay be conceptualized as a set of dy-namic alignments revolving around theproject actors’ needs. Some of theseneeds appear to be neglected in the tra-ditional strategic alignment literaturegrounded in SAM; however, they ap-pear to be essential in processes thataim to improve performance. As a re-sult of our work, we propose an alter-native, dynamic model of IS strategicalignment: the TSAM. This model is nota functionalist model and does not pre-tend to guarantee competitive advan-tage. It aims to explain how strategicalignment appears to be achieved inpractice within firms and how man-agers could optimize its complex pro-cesses to help improve performance.

The present research was conductediteratively, alternating and combiningdata collection, data analysis and com-parison, and extant literature. It is, how-ever, presented sequentially in order tomake it easier to read (Suddaby, 2006).

We first present the traditional literatureon strategic alignment grounded in a ra-tional, top-down strategizing vision. Weintroduce the Strategy-as-Practice alter-native perspective. This leads us to in-troduce Actor-Network theory (ANT) asa framework that helps us make senseof and interpret our empirical data. Wethen detail our methodology and sum-marize our results that we discuss. Weconclude this paper by looking into thecontributions and limitations of our re-search, as well as the possibilities for fu-ture investigations.

I. THEORETICAL ANCHORING AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

In this section, we briefly investigatethe traditional literature on strategicalignment and how some of its short-comings may be addressed through aSasP perspective. We then present somekey concepts of ANT (Callon, 1986; La-tour, 1987) as the theoretical bases thathelped us interpret our data.

I.1. A critical reading of SAM’spremises and assumptions

In the 1980s, IS research met withstrategy research which had developedthe concept of strategic alignment in thelegacy of contingency approaches. Withthe intensification of IT in organiza-tions, IS became viewed as a strategicdimension of the organization that man-agers had to take into account in orderto optimize efficiency and obtain acompetitive advantage in their market(Porter and Millar, 1985). IS and IT werethen considered as strategic per se. The


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literature then proposed this new per-spective and offered guidance to helpmanagers manage IS in their new strate-gic role. This perspective materializedin research programs within which theconcept of IS strategic alignment wasfirst used (Henderson and Venkatra-man, 1989; Scott-Morton, 1991; Hender-son and Venkatraman, 1991; McDonald,1991). These works laid the foundationof the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM)which was published in 1993 by Hen-derson and Venkatraman in the IBMSystems Journal. This model (cf. Ap-pendix A) is the one most used and ap-plied in the literature (Avison, Jones,Powell and Wilson, 2004) and the con-cept of IS strategic alignment has beencommonly accepted by researchers andpractitioners alike, whether on the busi-ness side (Luftman, Papp and Brier,1999) or the IS side (Trainor, 2003).

Four main organizational domains areinvolved in SAM: business strategy (thechoices made by an organization ac-cording to its positioning in its market:Henderson and Venkatraman 1989,1993), business infrastructure (the set ofinternal arrangements that designs themanagement structure and work pro-cesses to achieve the organizational ob-jectives: ibid.), IT strategy (“positioningof the business in the information tech-nology marketplace”: Henderson andVenkatraman, 1989 p. 6) and IS infras-tructure (“the set of internal arrange-ments that operationalizes the IS strate-gy”: ibid. p.9). These domains arelinked by two concepts: functional inte-gration and strategic alignment. SAMhaving been extensively described anddiscussed in the literature, we choose inthe present work to rather concentrate

on the premises and assumptions thatserve as its anchors.

SAM offers a prescriptive and norma-tive perspective which supports theidea that the four identified domainsshould be mutually aligned and that thisglobal alignment enhances organiza-tional performance. An ideal decisionalbehavior based on the rationality of themodel is thus highlighted: IS and busi-ness managers have to be aware ofeach other’s domains and react to anyevolution, any change, of either or bothof them. The accumulation since 1993of scientific publications built upon thismodel reinforces its normative stance inorder to achieve organizational perfor-mance.

In this perspective IS strategy isthought out and planned just like busi-ness strategy (Chan and Reich, 2007).Indeed, if one considers Jonhson, Sc-holes and Whittington’s four strategiclenses (2008), SAM is anchored in onlytwo of them: the design lens (strategiz-ing is a logical process that uses a rathermechanistic and rational organizing vi-sion) and the discourse lens (strategiz-ing is mostly a managerial languageused as a means of legitimation to ob-tain power and influence). These twolenses are characterized by a rationalapproach to decision making in whichmanagers evaluate the objective exter-nal environment (Wonseok and Pinson-neault, 2007), make strategic proposi-tions and then implement them withtheir teams.

SAM is thus anchored in a planned,rational, ‘top-down’, managerial andtechnical vision of strategy which ex-cludes the possibility of a ‘bottom-up’,social emergence of strategy from orga-

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nizational members and their day-to-day activities.

Subsequently some authors deepenedand complexified the initial model byinvestigating the antecedents of align-ment, that is all factors that enhance theachievement of IS strategic alignment(e.g., Maes, 2000; Maes, Rijsenbrij, Trui-jens, Goedvolk, 2000; Avison, Jones,Powell and Wilson, 2004). However,these works do not question the funda-mental premises of SAM and do not paysufficient attention to organizationaldaily practices. Even though some au-thors study the so called ‘social’ dimen-sions of alignment, their research isbased in most cases on questionnairesadministered to, or interviews with,business/IS managers, top managersand chief executive officers (CEO) (seefor instance Lee, Kim, Paulson andPark, 2008 or Preston, Karahanna; andRowe, 2006; for a complete literaturereview, see Renaud, 2012). These au-thors do not take into considerationother actors’ perspectives. Therefore,even when one considers the social di-mension proposed in the literature, re-sults and recommendations are exclu-sively obtained from a managerialtop-down perspective. Furthermore,and even if SAM is extremely detailed,it remains remote from practitioners’daily “tinkering” (Ciborra, 1997).

In 2000, Hendry showed that the ra-tional strategic perspective in whichSAM is anchored is limited, and pleadedfor an alternative school of thought:Strategy as Practice (SasP). The SasPschool (Jarzabkowski, 2004; Jarz-abkowski and Whittington, 2008; John-son, Langley, Melin, Whittington, 2007;Whittington, 1996, 2003 and 2006) hasbeen emerging in the last two decades

or so and is a direct consequence of the“practice turn” (Schatzki, 2001) in thesocial sciences since the late 1970s. Inthis perspective, strategy is a socialpractice, an ongoing activity, somethingpeople do on a day-to-day basis. Thisview emphasizes the ongoing interrela-tionships between the firm, the individ-uals and groups of individuals (Whit-tington, 2006); it leads to a dynamicperspective on strategy (Regnér, 2008).Strategy is not a plan of action elaborat-ed from a rational decision (Hambrick,2004; Jarzabkowski, 2004), but a local-ized and socially constructed activity.Researchers should pay attention towhat people do so that theoretical mod-els relate to effective practices (Jarz-abkowski and Spee, 2006). Practices re-lated to an alignment (ornon-alignment) situation in the contextof an IT project should therefore be in-vestigated and analyzed, and resultingobservations compared to the prescrip-tions of the literature.

We therefore propose in the presentwork to go beyond the original premis-es and assumptions of SAM and toadopt an approach anchored in firms’daily practices. This is done for the pur-pose of understanding how alignmentis performed and enacted in practice in-stead of only assessing an end result.We consider that the sole managerialand technical stance implicitly validatedin the SAM based strategic alignment lit-erature is not sufficient to fathom thecomplexity of IS projects and organiza-tions in general. Thus, one shouldadopt an alternative perspective that re-spects both social and technical aspectsof IS and takes into account all actorsinvolved in an IS project in order toadopt a truly comprehensive and dy-

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namic perspective of IS strategic align-ment. To do so, we call upon Transla-tion Theory, also known as ANT.

I.2. Actor network theory

ANT was developed during the prac-tice turn in social sciences in the 1970s(Schatzki, 2001). This intellectual move-ment tries to overcome dualisms thatimpregnate traditional thought. Result-ing works are heterogeneous but arerooted in three main principles (Feld-man and Orlikowski, 2011):

• Social life is anchored in daily prac-tices. This leads to the acceptanceof a specific ontology which con-siders that social life and daily prac-tices are incarnated by, and embed-ded within, each other (Schatzki,2001). Then every social phe-nomenon has to be approachedand understood through the studyof related practices. Post-humanistsauthors (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987;etc.) consider that the social worldis the consequence of a combina-tion of human and non-human ac-tions. Non-humans are more thanjust mediators of human actionsince they contribute to the creationand diffusion of practices (Schatzki,2001). Thus, all (humans and non-humans) are considered as actors.

• All dualisms are rejected and tradi-tional dichotomies are overcome bythe simultaneous analysis of ele-ments that were traditionally andpreviously treated separately. Forinstance, Callon and Latour (1981)refute macro versus micro and soci-ety versus nature dichotomies.

• The social world is complex andthis complexity should be recog-nized through the principle of therelationality of mutual constitution(Feldman and Orlikowski,2011).This means that no phe-nomenon should be considered asindependent from others since allare part of their mutual makings.

ANT is part of this intellectual move-ment. It has been built around the si-multaneous works of Michel Callon,Bruno Latour… We chose this theoreti-cal framework after several iterationsbetween theory and practice because itbest fitted our empirical data: it allowedus to approach the concept of strategicalignment with a dynamic and so-ciotechnical stance by taking into ac-count the heterogeneity of actors in-volved in an IS project.

ANT assumes that controversies aresolved through the building of networksof actors around a common solutionthat emerges from the actors’ interac-tions and negotiations. In this perspec-tive, both humans and non-humans areconsidered as actors and collectivelynamed actants. The concept of actantis borrowed from semiotics (Greimas,1966). An actant is “any element thattries curving the space around itself,making other elements dependent, andtranslating other wills into the languageof its own will” (Callon and Latour,1991) i.e., anything or anybody able toact and have a positive or negative in-fluence on other entities’ action.

Translation is one of the key con-cepts of ANT. Callon uses the conceptof translation to explain the emergenceof the actor networks that weave thefabric of the world (the social and the

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natural world should not be dissociat-ed). In networks, actants are heteroge-neous and therefore do not judge con-troversies from the same vantage point.The convergence of the resulting differ-ent perspectives is a critical stake forthe emergence of such a networkwhich has the potential to solve a con-troversy. A network develops as the re-sult of translations managed by a trans-lator. In everyday language, translatingimplies changing an intelligible state-ment into another intelligible statementto allow a third party to understand theinitial statement; the translation is thussuccessful if, essentially, it does notchange the meaning of the originalstatement (Amblard, Bernoux, Herrerosand Livian, 1996). In ANT, a translationhas another meaning. Just as we under-stand strategic alignment to be both anoutcome and a process, in ANT a trans-lation is the outcome of a negotiationbetween different actants. It is also theprocess leading to this outcome. It isneither sequential nor linear and in-volves all heterogeneous actants whoexpress different perspectives on thesame problem, topic, or project throughtheir intermediaries and delegates/spokespersons. The translation acts as alink between heterogeneous activities,statements, and stakes (Callon and La-tour, 1991); the translator supports andnurtures this link (Amblard et al., 1996).It leads to the constitution of a networkthat constrains its members, if theyagree to take part in it.

In ANT, translation therefore impliesactants adopting and adapting some oftheir respective perspectives in order tosupport a change and build the net-work. A successful translation allowsthe drive toward the convergence, al-

beit provisional and volatile, of actants’positions/perspectives i.e., an “isotropicsituation” (Callon, 1991, p. 144-145).Conversely, if the translation fails, posi-tions are incompatible, and the conver-gence process cannot be initiated i.e., a“polyphonic situation” (ibid.). The net-work is constituted when the differentactants’ perspectives have converged,but this network has to be constantlynurtured. To Callon, a strong translationmeans that at each node of the net-work, the translation allows the actantsto share a negotiated vision, acceptableby all, of the controversy under investi-gation. Callon (1991) uses the terms of‘alignment’ and ‘harmony’ (pages 144-145) to describe a ‘perfect’ translationand the resulting convergence of ac-tants.

For each group of actants, spokesper-sons/delegates are designated, elected,defined or imposed. They are responsi-ble for speaking to the others in thename of the group, with the translator’shelp. The intermediaries are the entitiesthat circulate between actants (Callon,1992). They are the medium throughwhich actants and their delegates ex-press themselves. They can be texts,technical artifacts, human beings, theircompetencies or knowledge, materialor immaterial entities (Callon, 1991)e.g., actants’ needs (Walsh and Renaud,2010).

In our work, we use ANT’s theoreticalgrounding in a change managementperspective (Amblard et al., 1996;Pichault, 2009; Walsh and Renaud,2010) to help us relate, make sense ofand understand our empirical data, andto theorize from these data in a ground-ed theory approach. ANT allows us tounderstand and study “organizational

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practice as a multi-centered, non-linear,and intersubjective activity” (Belova,King and Sliwa 2008, p.494). We focuson corporate controversies resultingfrom managerial change decisions relat-ed to IS and involving heterogeneousactants. Humans and non-humans in-volved in the projected change shouldbe identified through the definition oftheir identities, individual problems, ob-jectives and interests. The envisagedchange must be negotiated, adapted,translated so that all actants can supportit. If translation succeeds, it builds thefoundations of the actants’ conver-gence, hence alignment, around theprojected change; conversely, its failurecould compromise the actants’ involve-ment.

In our work, strategic alignment doesnot result from some rational reasoningand technical adjustment as in the tradi-tional SAM literature; it is the result ofmultiparty negotiations that, throughtranslations, lead toward the shared vi-sion of an IS change. The more the ac-tants share this vision, the more the re-sulting network is robust. We thus usepast works which have interpreted ANTin a change management perspective,as sensitizing devices to interpret ourdata, and revisit and extend the conceptof strategic alignment.

II. METHODOLOGY

We chose a grounded theory method-ological approach for the present re-search as it is particularly helpful in de-veloping new perspectives onwell-established theoretical researchareas and it links well to practice (Sousaand Hendriks, 2006). Our research set-

tings and the way our sampling, datacollection, coding, and analysis wereconducted are detailed in this section.

II.1. Research settings and sampling

The research was carried out over aperiod of approximately two years. Itwas first conducted in three differentcorporations (a multinational corpora-tion, A; a medium-sized corporationthat is part of a multinational corpora-tion, B; and a small European-basedcorporation, C). Details concerningthese corporations are provided in Ap-pendix B. These corporations were se-lected because of their differences interms of size, industry, and turnover.The differences between the three se-lected organizations served to diversifythe participants and investigatedgroups. This was done to widen thespectrum of observations we couldmake from the vantage points we choseand, thus, widen the scope and reach ofour research. All three organizations,however, had one commonality whichwas of specific interest in our research:actors had reported organizational diffi-culties that were linked to IS.

The first interviews were conductedwith the IS project managers in corpo-rations A and B and with the CEO (whowas also managing the IS project) incorporation C. Once IS projects hadbeen described and relevant issueshighlighted in each firm, interviewswere conducted with key users of theimplemented systems i.e., business in-telligence managers in corporation A;buyers and commercial staff in corpora-tion B; and operators in corporation C(i.e., theoretical sampling guided by the

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emerging theory: Glaser and Strauss,1967). Details about these interviewsmay be found in Appendix C1.

The conceptual model that had start-ed emerging from the restricted field ofthese three corporations was then ex-tended to other corporations throughinterviews with six IS consultants whohad never been involved with corpora-tions A, B or C. These consultants hadmultiple experiences related to IS pro-jects in diverse corporations. To collectas wide a spectrum of data as possible,the experts themselves were selected inrelation to their different experiencesand included junior and senior consul-tants (see Appendix C2). They wereemployed by various consultancy firms,which had different specificities (seeAppendix C2) and whose customerswere either very big, medium-sized, orsmall firms. These interviews with con-sultants were conducted to broaden thescope and reach of our research towardthe development of a conceptual model“sufficiently general to be applicable toa range of situations” (Orlikowski, 1993,p. 335) i.e., to open the way from ‘sub-stantial’ to ‘formal’ grounded theory(Glaser and Strauss, 1967) as this wasthe ultimate purpose of the present re-search.

II.2. Data collection, coding process and analysis

In all three corporations (A, B and C),data were collected through participantobservation and unstructured or semi-structured interviews, depending oneach specific context. We started these

interviews by asking participants to de-scribe the current IS project of theirfirm. To investigate these three corpora-tions, we also used documents, includ-ing consultants’ reports and technicaldocumentation about the implementedsoftware, and the first author attendedseveral business meetings with CEOs,CIO1s, consultants and project man-agers. We wrote memos while we con-ducted our research, to record someideas that arose during data collectionand analysis.

We then extended data collection toother corporations through the inter-views conducted with IS consultants.All consultants were interviewed at leasttwice. The first interviews were semi-structured and started with our askingthe consultants to describe two IT pro-jects in which they had taken part, onewhich they perceived as a ‘success’ andthe other as a ‘failure’; we purposelydid not detail what we meant by thesetwo terms in order to let their meaningsopen to the interviewees’ interpretation.At the start of subsequent interviews,the consultants were presented with theconceptual model that had started toemerge and were asked to comment.

The various firms investigated, the di-verse interviewees and the various tech-niques of data collection provided mul-tiple perspectives and helped towardtriangulation.

Forty interviews were conducted (SeeAppendix C1 and C2). Twenty-six ofthese interviews were recorded andlater transcribed. Notes were jotteddown during those interviews that

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could not be recorded. Twenty-five in-terviews were conducted in the threecorporations investigated and fifteen in-terviews were with the consultants fromthe various consultancy firms. Thenumber of interviews was not decidedat the outset; neither was the number ofpeople we interviewed. We continuedconducting interviews as long as we feltwe needed to obtain new perspectivesto enable us to confirm the emergingmodel. We stopped the interviewswhen it was clear that no new elementwould emerge and when no furtherlight was shed on the properties of ourtheoretical categories and sub-cate-gories (theoretical saturation).

The conceptual model that emergedfrom our work evolved during the re-search process and was the result of thecontinuous interplay between the col-lection, analysis, and comparison ofdata (“constant comparative analysis”:Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978),as well as elements from the literatureto improve our theoretical sensitivity(Glaser, 1978). This model was con-stantly modified and added to until wereached theoretical saturation. An inter-mediary model may be found in Walshand Renaud (2010) as a witness of our“interim struggles” (Østerlie, 2012 page5218, quoting Weick, 1995). Our datawere thus coded and recoded severaltimes with the help of NVivo 8 soft-ware, first through open coding (nopreconceived codes), then theoretical(use of the ANT reading lens to help usidentify and name our categories, inves-tigation of the relationships betweenthe emerging sub-categories and theirproperties) and selective coding (afteridentification of the emerging core cat-egory, coding in relation to this core

variable) (Glaser, 1992). Through thecoding process, we did not attempt toquantify but rather immersed ourselvesin the diverse data and concentrated ontheir interpretation and meaning to en-able us to conceptualize and theorize.To ensure reflexivity in our research,the first two authors discussed the inter-pretation of the data and the coding atlength.

II.3. The different coding categories

To make our results easier to read, wedetail the different coding categoriesthat we used in this sub-section. Table1 summarizes the categories that result-ed from the ANT framework we choseto use as best fitting our empirical datatoward their interpretation and the sub-categories that emerged from thesedata.

Category I includes the four main ac-tants that emerged in our cases: busi-ness strategy and infrastructure, ISstrategy and infrastructure, users’ tasks,and users’ IT culture.

The actants Business strategy & infras-tructure and IS strategy & infrastructuremay be found, and are extensively de-scribed, in most of the traditional strate-gic alignment literature grounded inSAM. However, while we were investi-gating IT implementation projects, endusers’ tasks also emerged as relevant ac-tants to be taken into account. Theseare tasks that require computerization,reengineering, upgrading or integratingtechnological systems in order to im-prove users’ efficiency. Finally users’ di-verse IT cultures also emerged as an es-sential group of actants mostly

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neglected in SAM literature. IT culture isthe set of IT values espoused by indi-viduals and groups (Leidner and Kay-worth, 2006) that may come into playand interfere with IS management andgovernance (Kaarst-Brown and Robey,1999; Walsh et al., 2010).

Category II includes five groups of in-termediaries: managerial IT needs,hardware needs, software needs, tasks’IT needs, and users’ IT needs.

Managerial IT needs are the organiza-tional IT needs as perceived by man-agers. Hardware and software needsare the inter-related technical needs thatmust be met in order for an IS to tech-nically perform adequately. For in-stance, the sub-category ‘hardwareneeds’ would include the memory ca-pacity necessary for a system to operatesmoothly, without breakdown, and thesub-category ‘software needs’ would in-clude the language used for the devel-opment of given applications which hasto be recognized by/be compatiblewith the legacy systems retained withinthe firm. Tasks’ IT needs represent theneed for software relevant to the opti-mization of these tasks. Finally user per-ceived IT needs are context related (con-textual IT needs: needs for IT perceivedby users in a given context) and task re-

lated (situational IT needs: needs forsome specific IT to perform some giventasks) (Walsh et al., 2010).

Category III includes five groups ofdelegates: top managers, IT technicians,software developers/analysts, job ex-perts, and IT utilization. These sub-cat-egories are self-explanatory.

The delegates category was the firstcategory to emerge through the data,then the main actants category, andlastly the core category, the intermedi-aries, at the source of acute organiza-tional problems and ill functions thatwe studied more specifically. The dele-gates transmit the actants’ perspectives,which are expressed through the inter-mediation of their respective needs.

This coding scheme led us to the con-ceptualization of seven dynamic andconstantly evolving alignments ofneeds, which are described in the nextsection.

III. RESULTS

In this section, we first describe thesituation in corporations A, B and C asit gradually unfolded through the peri-od during which we conducted these

47

Table 1: Coding categories.

Categories I-Main actantsII-Intermediaries(Core category)

III-Delegates

Sub-categories

Business strategy and infrastructure

Managerial IT needs Top managers

IS strategy and infrastructure

Hardware needs IT technicians

Software needsSoftware developers/

analysts

Users’ tasks Tasks’ IT needs Job experts

Users’ IT culture User perceived IT needs IT utilization


11




interviews. We then highlight and illus-trate the seven alignments that emergedfrom our data.

III.1. The emerging landscape in the three firms investigated in depth

In corporation A, top managementdecided to run the IS project to allowcentralized monitoring of marketing ef-forts. It aimed to extend the use ofCRM2-related dashboards, originally de-veloped for the United Kingdom sub-sidiary, to other subsidiaries located inseveral other European countries.These dashboards involved data analy-sis, data mining and business intelli-gence. Corporation A belongs to thehighly competitive industry of telecom-munications and these dashboardswere custom designed to help head of-fice centralize data and verify the resultsof local teams’ marketing efforts in eachcountry. Although initiated by a worthyconcern to slow down ‘customer churn’i.e., the loss of local customers to com-petitors, these dashboards paid little at-tention to, and allowed no adjustmentfor, each subsidiary’s local specificitiesand resulting needs. This has led to theimplemented instrument being littleused, or not used at all in some coun-tries, despite the high costs of imple-mentation. In those countries where thedashboards are used, they are imple-mented alongside other software thatfulfill users’ needs more thoroughly, ina complementary fashion.

In corporation B, after a merger fol-lowing the acquisition of several SME3s,the parent company imposed the imple-mentation of a standardized ERP4. Alldatabases resulting from the IS of thevarious recently-acquired firms werethen merged into one commondatabase. After two years, the operatorsare using a number of non-integratedspreadsheet programs alongside themainframe application without the vali-dation or knowledge of their head of-fice. The implemented ERP and the sub-sequent merger of databases has alsoresulted in a 30,000-product database,with the same product often coded dif-ferently (up to four different codes forsome products!), thus making it difficultfor the various entities in the resultingmerged firm to identify the products:stocks have reached an unprecedentedlevel. The coding of articles needs to bestandardized so the inventory can becentrally managed and to allow head of-fices to account for yearly goods inven-tory in an accurate manner.

In corporation C, the CEO and end-users had mostly been very satisfiedwith the ten year-old ERP which hadbeen custom-developed. It was nolonger maintained, as the company thathad originally developed it had goneout of business. It therefore had had tobe replaced. The CEO had commis-sioned, with limited financial back-up, asmall software provider to develop acustomized ERP that would reproducethe same functionalities and providemaintenance. Users’ current IT needs

48

2 Customer relationship management.3 Small or medium sized enterprise.4 Enterprise resource planning.


12




were not investigated. Progress made inthe IS field in the previous decade wasnot taken into consideration. Usingstandardized ERP software sold to manyother companies in the same industrywas not even envisaged. The end resultwas the rejection of the new ERP at alllevels of the corporation. Corporation Cis going back to the original mainframeapplication and continues to use it de-spite the lack of maintenance. It is alsoadopting other ‘pay-as-you-use’ soft-ware through the ‘cloud’ alongside themainframe application.

III.2. Seven dynamic needs alignments

Inspired by Reich and Benbasat’s def-inition of the linkage between IT andbusiness (1996), we define the align-ment between two elements as the pro-cess that aims at one element support-ing the other and being supported by it.This alignment also includes an out-come that illustrates a ‘fit’ or ‘misfit’.These two terms should not be taken atface value but as simple heuristic de-vices that allow us to describe the gen-eral drive of a constantly evolving situ-ation. A ‘fit’ between two elementsillustrates a situation where the degreeof support appears sufficient to alloworganizational processes to run smooth-ly. A ‘misfit’ then illustrates a situationwhere this degree of support appearsinsufficient to do so. Seven needs align-ments (see figure 1) that emergedthrough our data are described here-after. Some examples of fits and misfitsfor each alignment are illustrated withquotes from interviews. Coder’s com-ments are added between squarebrackets. Details of interviewees and at-

tributed codes are synthesized in Ap-pendix C.

Alignment 1: The alignment between managerial IT needsand hardware/software needs.

This alignment is between the actantsBusiness strategy & infrastructure andIS strategy & infrastructure. It is thealignment mostly studied in the SAM lit-erature. Once business strategy hasbeen designed and planned, top man-agers act as delegates that transmit theresulting organizational IT needs as per-ceived in a managerial top-down per-spective. Sometimes, the top managersanalyze and understand these needswrongly, leading to a state of misfit.

• Cons2-2: [His consultancy firm hadproposed to subsidize a non-gov-ernmental organization (NGO) andto implement a heavy and costlyERP in the pre-existing IS infrastruc-ture without any immediate ex-pense for the NGO. The CEO of theNGO had wisely objected that ifsubsidies subsequently stopped,they would not be able to maintainthe proposed ERP.] This projectcould have started on a bad design.A proper study of the business needs[from a managerial perspective] be-forehand allowed us to avoid this.We finally implemented a one hun-dred percent outsourced productwith simple screens that was suffi-cient, met the needs and workedwell. [Fit]

• B7: Between one day and the next,the corporations X and Y weremerged. We were not independentcorporations any more, we were

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one corporation… But we hadpending orders for goods from X toY. These orders were delivered andmanually invoiced, but are still inthe system four years later becausewe cannot invoice within the com-pany. The system does not allow usto process them because business ITneeds were not properly assessed be-fore the actual merger. [Misfit]

Alignment 2: The hardware-soft-ware alignment.

At first, this alignment between theactants hardware and software ap-peared to be self-evident. However, wefound through our data that it was oftenneglected ex ante and had to be solvedex post when new software had alreadybeen bought and implemented. This

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Figure 1. The seven needs alignments that emerged from our data.


14




alignment is acutely felt, particularlywhen new software is integrated intoan existing and stabilized IS infrastruc-ture. For instance ill-assessed memorycapacity needs might be revealed afternew software has been bought and im-plemented when it fails to perform ad-equately.

• Cons2-1: We used to have recurringtechnical problems [when they im-plemented new software in an ex-isting and stabilized IS infrastruc-ture] but we don’t any more. Ourconsultancy firm has developed aspecific tool, the ‘quick sizer’, andcreated a specific measure unit,‘X’5. Now, when we arrive at aclient, we use this instrument and,for example, it tells us that the sys-tem will need 2000X. Then, theclient has to contact some hardwaresuppliers who know about our mea-sure unit ‘X’ and will offer suitablehardware to complement existingequipment. [Fit]

• A1: [The dashboards were alreadyimplemented in another country; alltechnical needs and resulting re-quirements should already havebeen specified and written down]We had to find relevant informa-tion wherever we could, after theimplementation had taken place…[We had to] look for andobtain/gather all documents thatappeared relevant for technical re-quirements, and summarizethem… [so that] what appeared use-ful or essential was eventually writ-ten down in order to subsequently

try and avoid memory saturationand/or system breakdown. [Misfit]

• C1-2: We constantly had to re-bootthe server… all the time… just to beable to keep working. [Misfit]

Alignment 3: The task-technologyalignment.

This alignment has been studied inthe literature (Goodhue and Thompson,1995; Zigurs and Buckland, 1998) as theextent to which technology supports aspecific task. However, the question-naires used in these studies mix percep-tual and objective measures. Here wedefine this alignment as the extent towhich some specific software objective-ly support a given task’s IT needs. Themain actants here are the tasks that areto be computerized and the implement-ed software, which is part of the IS in-frastructure. The task’s IT needs have tobe interpreted and assessed by job ex-perts who act as delegates. Specificallydeveloped algorithms or existing stan-dardized software proposed by analystsas suitable to satisfy these needs haveto be tested and verified.

• C1-2: Before we implemented thefirst ERP, we spent a lot of time ana-lyzing all our needs in relation tothe tasks that we wanted to comput-erize… I would say that this is whatguaranteed the one hundred per-cent success of this first computeri-zation. [Fit]

• B7: Normally when you registeredan order in the old system, youcould link the items ordered to the

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5 Details have been deleted for anonymity.


15




order itself and to available stocks.Now, in the new system, you can-not; it does not work. [Misfit]

• C1-2: [When they implemented thenew ERP] They [the analysts] hadnot even understood that deliverydockets needed to be printed so thatgoods could actually be deliveredand dockets signed by clients upondelivery! [Misfit]

Alignment 4: The IT contextualneeds alignment.

This is the alignment between man-agerial IT needs and users’ context-spe-cific IT needs. These last needs are theIT needs perceived by users in a specif-ic organizational context in order to ful-fill their appointed obligations. For ex-ample, if business strategy is expressedthrough managerial IT needs to imple-ment some CRM software, and if com-mercial staffs do not perceive the needfor this specific software in their workcontext, the CRM implementation out-come would probably be a misfit. Con-versely, if through adequate organiza-tional communication about the newCRM software, users are able to verifythe congruence of the proposed changewith their contextual IT needs, a satis-factory level of fit might then be expect-ed.

• Cons1-3: Before the ‘roll off’, theydid several simulations that werevalidated by users; the users werethen psychologically prepared. [Fit]

• Cons2-1: They did things gradually.It’s not useful to start on projectsthat are viewed by end users as‘huge mountains’. There was a firstproject that involved the financial

department. Then there was the lo-gistics project… They did not try todo a ‘big bang’… Users were gradu-ally sensitized to the new system…We showed them the product, wewere at their disposal, we listened tothem [i.e., we listened to theirneeds]… Management consultedwith users [before implementation].[Fit]

• B10: Imposing the standardizedERP on all merged firms and thenlater on, merging all databases…that was our boss’ great idea! Hetells us we don’t need to do this orthat. We must do things his way…But it’s not feasible. It would takehours, weeks, months to do thingsthe way he would like them to bedone. [Misfit]

• Cons2-1: We were working in sub-sidiaries that were still only usingMicrosoft Excel. They were not ac-customed at all to this new type ofsoftware [ERP] and felt they did notneed it… When the ERP was imple-mented, they had a shock…, a cul-ture shock. [Misfit]

Alignment 5: The IT contextualtraining needs alignment.

This is the alignment between man-agerial IT needs resulting from plannedor designed business strategy and in-frastructure and the general IT trainingneeded by users in order to help IT cul-ture to “creep” (Walsh et al. 2010) with-in the organization. One may take as anexample an organization which decidesto commercially become a ‘pure play-er’, eliminate all physical commercialoutlets and sell only through its web-

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site, without any specific global IT train-ing provided to the staff. If this organi-zation has many employees who are lit-tle acculturated to IT and areuncomfortable with anything to do withIT, the result will most probably be amisfit. Conversely, if the same organiza-tion includes a high proportion of com-puter ‘geeks’ in its staff, the result willprobably be a fit.

• Cons2-1: You have to respect people.Here when we did the training, wecustomized it to the users’ needs.Some didn’t even know how to use amouse and a keyboard… The cul-ture shock is of course lessened ifpeople have already used an inte-grated system. [Fit]

• C2-2: People involved with comput-ers share a language that is theirown, that is part of their own worldand their own evolution… They for-get that there are other people whodo not master this language. Wedon’t understand what they say be-cause we haven’t learned this lan-guage. [Misfit]

Alignment 6: The IT situationalneeds alignment

This is the alignment between users’situational need to fulfill some givenmandatory tasks and a specific IT. Theresulting fit/unfit then measures the de-gree to which a proposed IT improves(or not) the users’ self-perceived effica-cy on given tasks. For example, if anew ERP means users must spend twiceas much time as before to perform agiven task without any visible advan-tage, the result will probably be a misfit.Conversely, if through the use of new

software, users are able to give answersto customers that they were previouslyunable to provide easily, they will prob-ably see it as a significant fit.

• C1-2: We did not even try to moveforward before we had actually ob-tained functional feedback from jobexperts and before the software hadbeen satisfactorily tested by keyusers. [Fit]

• B5: It’s mainly that eighty to ninetypercent of the functional specifici-ties of the system are considered re-dundant by users. [Misfit]

Alignment 7: The IT situationaltraining needs alignment

This is the alignment between situa-tional IT training needs perceived byusers to fulfill given mandatory taskswith some specific IT and the specificIT training provided. When a new ITtool is implemented in an organization,the fulfillment of users’ training needsappears self-evident. However, wefound among participants that the needto de-standardize and adapt IT trainingto align it with users’ actually perceivedsituational training needs (which de-pend on users’ IT culture) often ap-pears neglected or not taken into ac-count at all.

• Cons2-1: You always have differ-ences between users. Always. Thenwhen you plan the training ses-sions, you have to customize thesesessions, to level them out to the peo-ple you have to train. We didn’t onlyuse slideware. We also did a lot ofexercises adapted to the users’ [ITculture] level… People should bethoroughly tested beforehand for the

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training on a given tool to be effec-tive. [Fit]

• C1-2: After two months of useless tri-als, with huge costs, we realizedthat… we were still being trainedtwo days a week… however we stilldid not know how to print a deliveryslip!… So I fired everybody and losta lot of money! [Misfit]

All alignments described above ap-peared as dynamic because their“shores” (Ciborra, 1997) i.e., the variousneeds, keep evolving. These needs maybe aligned, resulting in a good fit, atone given moment in time but theymay become misaligned as some ac-tants’ needs evolve.

IV. DISCUSSION: THE TRANSLATED STRATEGICALIGNMENT MODEL (TSAM)

Our work leads us to consider strate-gic alignment as resulting from the dy-namic alignment of heterogeneous ac-tors’ needs, anchored in a three-levelnetwork. One level includes all mainactants (business infrastructure andstrategy, IS infrastructure and strategy,users’ tasks and users’ diverse IT cul-tures); the second level includes inter-mediaries i.e., all main actants’ needs;the third level includes the delegates(managers, technicians, analysts, job ex-perts and the actual utilization of thesystem by users) which are first con-fronted by each other during an organi-zational controversy related to an ISchange. This network is illustrated infigure 2. Figure 2 is not a functionalistdiagram; the arrows do not representcausal effects but the negotiations/adaptations between the various actants

in the network that emerge throughtranslation processes. This diagram rep-resents an attempt to graphically repre-sent the complex processes revealedthrough investigating organizationalpractices during the implementation ofnew IT in various firms. These process-es might (or might not) lead to compet-itive advantage.

In this section we discuss the modelwe propose (TSAM) and more specifi-cally (1) how it may help address someof SAM’s shortcomings, (2) how transla-tion helps toward the emergence andstabilization of a network of all actantsinvolved in an IT project and (3) themanagerial implications of our work.

IV.1. Addressing SAM’s shortcomings

What may be considered as the limi-tations of traditional approaches tostrategic alignment built around SAMmay be compared to those of the tradi-tional sociology of science which origi-nally motivated the development ofANT. Callon (1986) related these limita-tions to three types of issues, stylistic,theoretical and methodological; he pro-posed to solve them through three“principles of method”, respectively ag-nosticism, generalized symmetry andfree association.

The managerial top-down vision ofstrategic alignment is an incompleteand limited vision, a “stylistic issue”(Callon, 1986). Change goes beyondmanagerial concerns and judgments; ithas social roots and impacts. Top man-agers are the delegates who transmitthe organizational IT needs resultingfrom designed and planned strategy.

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Strategy should however also be al-lowed to emerge bottom-up from othergroups of actants and their delegates.All actants and their IT needs have tobe taken into account (“agnosticism”:Callon, 1986).

• B6: Things were done that way be-cause they [top managers] decidedit. Nobody bothered to ask our opin-ion or what we needed. We wouldhave gained plenty of time if some-body had done so before now!

In day-to-day tinkering with organiza-tional practice, financial and technicalneeds often take precedence over otherneeds. However, change is not onlytechnically prescribed and driven. A de-cision on IS change has social as well astechnical impacts; it affects work con-tent (e.g., tasks) and work context (e.g.,workers IT-centered social exchangeswhich influence users’ perceived ITneeds). If one summarizes and extendswhat Callon (1986) names the “theoret-

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Figure 2: The Translated Strategic Alignment Model (TSAM).


19




ical issue”, IS strategic alignment shouldnot only be initiated or validated by afew technicians who think in terms oftechnical processes or design. Align-ment also has to be socially constructedthrough the interactions of all organiza-tional actants, and all needs have to betranslated so that all actants can under-stand them i.e., the aim should be “gen-eralized symmetry” (ibid.).

• A1: They [the technicians and theanalysts] try and boss everybodyaround […] Things don’t work thatway.

The static vision of strategic align-ment, illustrating what Callon (1986)names a “methodological issue”, is inac-curate as change is a dynamic process.The various actants, their needs/inter-mediaries, and their delegates are notfrozen in static roles; they evolvethrough the subtle interplay of powerroles. As structural evolution is alwayspossible, what appears unimportant atone given point in time may becomeessential subsequently. The possiblevariations of all actants’ needs have tobe considered and allowed for (“freeassociation”: ibid.).

• C1-2: If we summarize this experi-ence which was refined in the anal-ysis of business needs, we regrettednot to have been able to producesomething in a programming lan-guage that could be used by otherdevelopers, and, therefore, whichcould evolve adequately. That’s themistake we made… We could notupgrade our software… But corpo-rations evolve. What today appearsto be exactly what you need mightnot be so tomorrow.

The elements discussed above aresummarized in Table 2.

IV.2. Translation to help theconstitution of the network

The translator plays an essential rolein the process of alignment of all ac-tants’ needs. In firms A and C top man-agers were, initially, self-appointedtranslators of all needs. However trans-lation processes did not take all actants’needs into account.

In firm A, managers were only preoc-cupied with their own managerial IT

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Table 2: How SAM’s shortcomings may be addressed.

SAM framework TSAM framework

Stylistic issue Managerial vision

Solved by Agnosticism: all actors’ needs anddiscourses must be taken into consideration.Change goes beyond managerial concernsand judgments

Theoretical issue

Technical vision of strategic alignment: financial and

technical needs take precedenceover other needs

Solved by Generalized Symmetry: Changemust be socially constructed through inter-actions between all actants; all perspectivesshould be taken into account

Methodologicalissue

Static vision of strategic alignment

Solved by Free Association: Change is a dy-namic process, so that what first appearsunimportant may later become essential


20




needs: they pushed for standardizationat all costs in all countries for the sakeof data centralization. Leaving asideusers’ local needs, the most strikingfinding in this firm was that even basichardware and software needs were notinvestigated, and hence not met, untilconsultants were called to the rescue toeffect the missing translation processes.

• A3: They [strategizing managers] didnot even check with technicians be-fore implementation whether oursystem could support the dash-boards; too many data are now‘poured’ into the system from manydifferent sources, it keeps ‘bugging’and we have to reboot all serversseveral times a day. We have to up-grade the system and develop betterinterfaces in a rush as this situationis endangering our daily activities.

In firm C, the first initial computeriza-tion was successful and the networkwas constituted as the CEO successfullytranslated all relevant actants’ needs.However, he was not able to do so sub-sequently during the second computer-ization; he remained anchored into pastneeds as if these were static and hadnot evolved. Furthermore he did noteven verify, before purchase, that thenew software fulfilled the IT needs pre-viously satisfied. He only considered hisself-perceived managerial needs to pur-chase a new ERP, as similar as possibleto the previous one, in order to allowfor adequate management and what heconsidered as safe running of his firmbecause maintenance of the old ERPwas no longer guaranteed.

• C4: I knew about other standard-ized software currently used by ourcompetitors that would have been

very suitable for what we need todo… I told him… but he [C1: theCEO/project manager/ self-ap-pointed translator] would not listen.He just wanted what we had be-fore!...

In firm B, a new member of staff wasrecruited to become head of the buyingdepartment (interviewee B1 in Ap-pendix C). He emerged naturally in theconstituting network as a thoroughtranslator, and subsequently officiallybecame the IT project manager.Through his conscientious analysis ofall actants’ relevant needs, most of theIS issues, previously identified in thisfirm, were addressed, even though hedid not have much formal IT training.The data base was cleaned up andstocks were brought down to an ac-ceptable level.

• B4: Because of the way he [B1: thenew project manager/adequatetranslator of all actants’ needs] tack-led the problem, things went muchmore smoothly. He tried to take intoconsideration the implemented soft-ware specificities and everybody’sneeds; he made sure we all under-stood what was going on ‘up at thetop’ and why things were the waythey were [understanding strategicdecisions taken at the manageriallevel]. People then accepted ‘moregraciously’ to work together and wesolved most of the pending prob-lems.

Our work tends to show that strategicalignment investigated through dailypractices results from multiple align-ments at three different levels. If,through translation, strategic alignmentis negotiated with the various main ac-

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tants through their delegates as repre-sentatives and their needs as intermedi-aries, it leads to the development of athree level network (see figure 2). Theproposed network may then lead towhat we name a translated strategicalignment (TSA) through multiplealignments. We argue that needs arecore intermediaries that should betaken into account as they are key ele-ments in the process of alignment. In anIS change situation, all actants consti-tute a dynamic, evolving network ofhumans and non-humans. If all actants’identified needs are taken into consid-eration in the translation processes facil-itated by the translator, then changemay be driven and managed. The trans-lation processes allow for the alignmentof this network while it is being consti-tuted. The TSAM is a dynamic model:actants’ needs evolve over time and thevarious alignments between actantshave to be constantly negotiated.

The full lines in figure 2 represent thealignments (alignments 1, 2 and 3) thatwe found are usually (explicitly or im-plicitly) investigated, sometimes onlypartially, in SAM and related models.They are brought about by strategicplanning and design and result fromtechnical and managerial top-down vi-sion and rational strategizing. The dot-

ted lines indicate the user-centeredalignments (alignments 4, 5, 6 and 7)that appear to have often been ignoredor at least not to have been explicitlyconsidered in the SAM literature. Theyresult from complex processes andmight occur if bottom-up strategizing isallowed to emerge and if, when identi-fied by managers through the transla-tion processes, it is nurtured by them.In TSAM, all alignments result from themutual confrontation of needs and theirnegotiation/ adaptation with the help ofthe translator(s).

IV.3. Managerial implications

Consensus from all actants is obtainedthrough the negotiation of their needsand finding a common denominatorthat satisfies them all to an acceptablelevel, at a given moment in time. Thevarious alignments that we identified donot therefore refer to a definite and sta-ble state of strategic alignment thatwould cover all actants’ needs at alltimes. In a managerial perspective,these alignments may rather help firmsdrive toward an “isotropic” situation(Callon, 1991) and what might be un-derstood as the level of needs align-ment that is critical (i.e., has to bereached) for an organization to operate

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Table 3: Strategizing, translation and alignment.

SAM framework TSAM framework

Strategy may be… Planned and designedPlanned, designed, and emergent

Strategy flows… Top-down Top-down and bottom-up

Perspective is… Managerial and technical Managerial, social, and technical

IT needs, requiring translation and alignment,

are expressed by…Managers

Managers, technicians, analysts,job experts, and IT use


22




smoothly and perform adequately at agiven moment.

Although many firms know the solu-tions to achieve fit for the first threealignments, our empirical data showthat managers often appear to neglectthese solutions and need reminding.The collected data show that in day-to-day managerial life, business, functionaland technical needs are not always suf-ficiently investigated and clarified attimes of technological choice. Someconsultants noted that, in order to justi-fy managerial IT choices to higher lev-els of governance, they sometimes hadto produce official documents summa-rizing business, functional and technicalrequirements ex post whereas theseshould have been produced and vali-dated ex ante:

• A5: To justify the big boss’ choice toimplement these dashboards in allcountries, we had to write and pro-duce the so-called ‘validated’ busi-ness requirements, functional re-quirements and technicalrequirements documents after [andnot before as is normally the case]the dashboards had actually beendeveloped and implemented […] Asthese documents are supposed tohelp us check that all is in order be-fore the actual ‘kick off’, and toallow us to correct possible prob-lems, you can imagine how disas-trous this is.

In order to optimize investments,users’ contextual IT needs/ contextualtraining needs and managerial IT needshave to be brought to a critical level ofalignment before actual implementa-tion:

• Cons 2-2: I am frequently asked towork with subsidiaries in NorthAfrica. Our customers usually wantto implement in these countrieswhat has been deployed and workswell in subsidiaries from othercountries so that all systems can beharmonized and data centralizedat headquarters. It is very temptingto comply and do as our customersrequire. It would be very lucrativefor us. But we know it’ll never work.Those people in these North Africansubsidiaries, they ‘start fromscratch’, you cannot install threedifferent servers, implement threedifferent applications and hope thatthey will want [feel the need for] orbe able to use them…. They firsthave to be adequately IT trained atthe level that is required for the evo-lution of their jobs and, only then,they might be brought to see why aspecific system is needed and hasbeen chosen by their managers.

Critical alignment between users’ situ-ational IT needs and tasks IT needs is tobe verified before implementation:

• B10: There is a big problem with theway this software was implemented.It is extremely detailed and compre-hensive in terms of production dataand processes but what we actuallyneed to do our jobs as buyers is notin the system. We should have beenconsulted before the actual imple-mentation, not after, as it’s too lateto change everything… Anyhow, atthis stage, he [the CEO] refuses toeven consider it as it would create‘bedlam’ in production.

Finally, critical alignment must be in-sured between users’ situational train-

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ing needs, which depend on their levelof IT acculturation and their tasks’ ITneeds, before and during implementa-tion:

• Cons 1-4: When you train users,you always have different levels [ofIT acculturation]. But in this project,we really adapted our training ses-sions to the users and what each ofthem actually had to do in theirjobs. After that it went fairly well butwe had to do further sessions onceimplementation had started as usershad plenty of questions after usingthe software on a day-to-day basis[Evolution of training needs as sys-tem is used]… We really proposed‘made to measure’ training. Eventhough it was more costly for theclient, I think they were happy withthe result.

The last four alignments are groundedin end users’ IT needs. The critical levelfor these might be reached if end users’needs and resulting requirements arenot overlooked. Besides pointing outbusiness, functional, and technical re-quirements which should all be speci-fied and validated in writing beforenew IT implementation, TSAM helpsmanagers to also take into accountusers’ needs. These needs have to betranslated through negotiations, trainingand adaptations, into users’ require-ments, which are critically aligned withbusiness, functional, and technical re-quirements.

The managerial clues that may bedrawn from TSAM toward reaching thecritical level of alignment are summa-rized in Table 4. These elements do notpretend to guarantee competitive ad-vantage but may help managers work

towards achieving it through enhancedperformance.

CONCLUSION

In the present work, we revisited andreinterpreted the concept of strategicalignment through practices in diversefirms. This led us to propose the trans-lated strategic alignment model (TSAM).In this conceptual model, strategicalignment is the result of negotiations ina three-level network. For the constitu-tion of this network to be made possi-ble, it imperatively implies the align-ments of the various main actants’needs.

The limitation of our work resultsfrom our methods which are groundedin our own interpretation of data andour results would have to be verifiedand tested in diversified settings. Wehave brought to light seven alignmentswhich, when combined, may help man-agers toward improved performanceand, possibly, competitive advantage.One of the needs alignments we dis-cuss in our work (Alignment 2: hard-ware-software alignment) is already as-sessed in one international majorconsultancy firm through a question-naire to be administered in firms at thepre-implementation stage. Future re-search might aim at verifying and as-sessing the six other newly definedneeds alignments through specificallydeveloped questionnaires. Researchersmay then investigate and identify possi-ble misfits in order to correct and read-just these ex ante. Such questionnaires,after adequate testing, would greatlyhelp firms manage IS.

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The conceptual model of strategicalignment that we propose provides anew reading of this phenomenon as itexplicitly takes into consideration ac-tants who are often forgotten in tradi-tional strategic alignment models. Thismodel adopts a “shared view of the ISrole within the organization” (Chen,Mocker and Preston, 2010: 239). It doesnot pretend to guarantee competitiveadvantage; it can however be used as ahelp before and during IS investmentand deployment to achieve what maybe understood as a critical level ofalignment within a three-level network.

Beyond the design and discourse lensesand in a complementary fashion, it pro-vides managers with an “experiencelens” (using bargaining and negotia-tions toward strategizing: Johnson, Sc-holes and Whittington, 2008); it mayalso provide opportunities to use the“ideas lens” (using organizational diver-sity and members creativity to framestrategy in complex and organic con-texts: ibid.). It thus allows strategy toemerge ‘bottom-up’ from any of the ac-tants of the network and facilitates thedrive toward possibly innovative be-haviors and competitive advantage.

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Table 4: Driving toward a critical level of alignment.

AlignmentsWhen

(should fit be aimed at?)How (should this alignment

be optimized?)

1: Organizational IT needsand implemented IT

Before implementationBusiness requirements have tobe fully specified and validated

in writing.

2: Hardware and softwareneeds

Before implementationTechnical requirements have tobe specified and validated in

writing.

3: Task and technology Before implementationFunctional requirements

have to be specified and vali-dated in writing.

4: Users’ contextual IT needsand managerial IT needs

Before implementation

Users’ contextual IT needs haveto be taken into consideration,nurtured, and brought at leastto the level of IT needs strategi-

cally aimed at by the organization.

5: Users’ contextual IT trai-ning needs and managerial

IT needsBefore implementation

Global IT training has to beprovided and customized de-pending on the level of users’

IT acculturation.

6: Users’ situational IT needsand tasks’ IT needs

Before implementationThe user’s opinion of the ade-quacy of the proposed IT hasto be taken into consideration.

7: Users’ situational IT training needs and tasks IT

needs

Before and during implementation

Training on specific IT has tobe customized depending onusers’ IT acculturation.


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Carter, Clegg, Hogan and Kornberger(2003) suggest that “polyphony is al-ways present in organizations even if itis often silenced by dominant voices(…) From this perspective, the chal-lenge for the researchers is to unravelthe story without forgetting their ownrole in the making of it, while for themanagers it is to manage polyphonicprocesses using positive power” (p.295). The present work has attemptedto listen to the often silenced voices ofusers’ IT needs. If strategic alignment isconducted through translation process-es involving all actants relevant to an ISchange situation, all previously discor-dant voices expressing non-alignedneeds i.e., a “polyphonic situation”(Callon, 1991) will be heard and guidedtoward an “isotropic situation” (Callon,1991) which will help achieve compet-itive advantage.

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66

Appendix A: Henderson and Venkatraman (1994) strategic alignment model

Appendix B: Details of investigated corporations

*B is a division of a 5,000-employee corporation, which is itself a subsidiary of a 19,000-employee cor-poration.

Corporation Industry Staff IS project

A (multinational) Telecommunications 186000 CRM

B (medium sized)Industrial process engineering

174* ERP

C (small) Electricity and cabling 25 ERP


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Appendix C: Details about interviews and interviewees

Appendix C1: Interviews conducted in corporations A (year 2008), B(year 2009) and C (years 2008-2009) while people were solving or at-tempting to solve identified problems

Interviewee Role in the IS project Position Competences relevant to the IS project

A1Internal project manager

CIO Global IT competences

A2External project

managerConsultant Business intelligence (BI) expert

A3 UserHead of BI Department

(Spain)BI

A4 Trainer Consultant (Spain)Global knowledge on custom-developed

dashboards

A5 Analyst Consultant (Spain)Previous experience with dashboards in other

countries

A6 UserHead of BI Department

(Poland)BI

A7 User IT engineer (Poland) Very good knowledge of local IT needs

B1-1Internal project manager

Head of Purchasing Department

Good knowledge of purchasing but little knowledge of IT

B1-2Internal project manager

Head of Purchasing Department

Good knowledge of purchasing but little knowledge of IT

B2External project

managerConsultant Global knowledge of IT

B3-1 Oversight Local CEOGood knowledge of global managerial IT

needs

B3-2 CEO Local top executive Good knowledge of global managerial IT needs

B4 Analyst Consultant Change management expert

B5 User Buyer A Insular knowledge of merged SME (a)

B6 User Buyer B Insular knowledge of merged SME (b)

B7 User Buyer C Insular knowledge of merged SME (c)

B8 User Buyer D Good knowledge of global purchasing habits

B9 User Stock controller Little knowledge of company (newcomer)

B10 User R&DNewcomer but excellent knowledge of global

merged company and all users’ needs

C1-1 Project manager CEOGood knowledge of managerial and users’

needs

C1-2 Project manager CEOGood knowledge of managerial and users’

needs

C2-1 User CFO No formal IT knowledge

C2-2 User CFO No formal IT knowledge

C3 User Technician Some practical IT training. Mainly self-taught

C4 User Marketing manager Some practical IT training


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Interviewee Position Age Consultancy firm

Cons1-1 Analyst consultant 27 Multinational

Cons1-2 Analyst consultant 27 Multinational

Cons1-3 Consultant 29 Multinational

Cons1-4 Consultant 29 Multinational

Cons2-1 Senior consultant 50 Multinational


Cons3-1 Independent consultant 39 Self-employed

Cons3-2 Independent consultant 39 Self-employed

Cons4-1 Associate consultant 31 European

Cons4-2 Associate consultant 31 European

Cons5-1 Senior consultant 45 Local

Cons5-2 Senior consultant 45 Local



Appendix C: Details about interviews and interviewees

Appendix C2: Interviews conducted with experts (IS consultants withmultiple experiences of different IT projects in different contexts)(year 2009)


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