Social Capital and Alignment Between Business and IS - A Deep Dive Into the Impact of Trust

This paper examines the role of trust in building social capital in organisations to create alignment between the business and IS communities. The two communities often have little in common and experience difficulties sharing objectives, deliverables and even communicating with each other and frequently do not perceive themselves as part of a common, unified organisation. Examining the findings of a broader study, this paper shines a spotlight on the impact of trust. That larger study examined social capital and its impact on alignment, taking a dimensional approach to social capital analysing it in terms of network relationships, shared norms, trust, reciprocity expectation and collective efficacy. Higher levels of social capital across the boundaries between business and IS leads to improved alignment. Offering a ‘deep dive’ into one of the dimensions of social capital, this paper focuses on the impact of trust on that relationship and the consequences for alignment