Realizing IT Business Value from Retail Channel Integration: A Configurational Structure-Strategy Fit Assessment

Retail organisations are making investments into information technologies (IT) to integrate their physical and online retail channels in order to meet the demands of multichannel consumers. Redesigning the organisation into an IT-enabled hybrid organisational structure is a complex process that involves decisions to either integrate or differentiate numerous organisational activities. Drawing on the configuration theory, this paper used a survey dataset of 125 multichannel retail organisations and applied the profile deviation approach to assess the coaligment between hybrid organisational structure and generic business strategies of prospectors, analyzers and defenders. Results suggested that organisations that have hybrid structures that are most similar to the high-performing organisations of their strategic type performed better than those whose firm profile deviated from the ideal profile. Implications for research and practice are provided.