Impact of Strategic Alignment on IT Outsourcing Success in a Complex Service Setting

Improved conceptual and methodological understanding of strategic alignment is essential for better IT outsourcing decisions. This research will investigate how strategically well aligned ITO investments can lead to improved performance and greater competitive advantage. The strategic alignment literature is dominated by a focus on strategy formulation at a single point in time. In contrast, little is known about how strategic alignment is enacted in the choices managers make over time, and in particular, as it applies to IT outsourcing decisions in complex service settings. To address this situation we: (1) develop a novel dynamic alignment model that links espoused and enacted strategies, (2) operationalize strategy as a set of strategic decisions around capabilities, and (3) apply a range of novel methods to measure the decisions managers make.