Development of a Taxonomy to be used by Business-IT Alignment Researchers

The nexus between Business and IT research is complex. Due to extended research over time, the context of business-IT alignment has resulted in many different conceptualisations that can be applied to ongoing research. It is challenging to select and adopt a suitable approach to study business-IT alignment across any given field due to the variability of the existing conceptualisations. This study reviews the existing literature to identify alignment conceptualisations and contributes to both theory and practice. Theoretically, through the uncovering of gaps in the literature a taxonomy has been developed which can be used as a guide to select an appropriate alignment lens for business-IT alignment studies. In practice, it is expected that this taxonomy will be beneficial for conceptualising the structure and philosophies underpinning future alignment studies. To validate the taxonomy, the paper presents a case study in healthcare applying the developed taxonomy to investigate alignment of big data in health. This presents a comprehensive literature review on existing business-IT alignment to present how and what aspects of business-IT alignment researchers have focused on. This paper strongly supports the work of Chan and Reich (2007) on business-IT alignment and compliments their thinking through the development of a taxonomy for researchers in this field to build their alignment studies on. The paper then presents a case that used this taxonomy to investigate alignment of big data in the context of healthcare. The case demonstrates that the use of this taxonomy was beneficial and strengthened (in a conceptual way) our ongoing alignment research. It is expected that this taxonomy will also be relevant to other alignment scholars working in this space through providing a conceptual platform which they can use dependent on their own needs.