IT Alignment: A Management Paradigm for Digital Transformation in Public Organisations

Researchers and practitioners agree that a broad spectrum of changes must be managed to realise the benefits of digital transformation. To this end, the role of IT alignment—the fit between IT, overall organisational goal, and organisational configuration—is acknowledged. At the same time, few empirical studies investigated the relationship between IT alignment and digital transformation, particularly in the public sector. Given the inherent differences between organisations in the private and public sectors concerning the application of emerging technologies, an exploratory study was conducted to further our understanding. The primary data collected through interviews and internal-organisational documents suggest that IT alignment improves the likelihood of successful digital transformation in a public organisation. The analysis also revealed organisational and managerial factors that determine the degree of IT alignment, which were used to develop a theoretical model. The model was tested with quantitative data collected through an online survey collected from 421 respondents. The preliminary results and contributions of the study are presented.https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3223/paper18.pd