The Relationship Between Organisational Agility and IT Alignment in Public Organisations

Three-decades long IS research suggests that Information Technology (IT) alignment is regarded as one of the pervasive issues among researchers and practitioners. Given the current dynamic business environment, organisations need to foresee external changes and make necessary adjustments (i.e., they need to be agile) while attempting to achieve and maintain IT alignment. However, the research on the two streams—IT alignment and organisational agility—seems not to overlap yet. On the other hand, the prior studies investigating the relationship between the two constructs report contradictory findings. To address the lack of knowledge about the influence of organisational agility on IT alignment in the public sector, this study presents the results of a multiple-case study conducted in four sub-city administrations in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. The findings suggest that organisations success to reach IT alignment while aiming for organisational agility is the function of environmental volatility and stakeholder relationships