Aiming at a Moving Target: IT Alignment in Toy Companies

For global companies that compete in high-velocity industries, business strategies and initiatives change rapidly, and thus the CIO struggles to keep the IT organization aligned with a moving target. In this paper we report on research-in-progress that focuses on how the CIO attempts to meet this challenge. Specifically, we are conducting case studies to closely examine how toy industry CIOs develop their IT organizations’ assets, competencies, and dynamic capabilities in alignment with their companies’ evolving strategy and business priorities (which constitute the “moving target”). We have chosen to study toy industry CIOs, because their companies compete in a global, high-velocity environment, yet this industry has been largely overlooked by the information systems research community. Early findings reveal that four IT application areas are seen as holding strong promise: supply chain management, knowledge management, data mining, and eCommerce, and that toy CIO’s are attempting to both cope with and capitalize on the current financial crisis by more aggressively pursuing offshore outsourcing than heretofore. We conclude with a discussion of next steps as the study proceeds.