The Role of Information Technology Business Alignment in Value Creation: A Multiple Case Study among German Banks

A key question in Information Systems research is how information technology creates business value. In this paper, our aim is to help reveal the role of alignment between IT and business resources in business value creation. In particular, we propose that the contribution of IT to business process performance should be investigated in the context of actual IT usage, with IT business alignment as a moderating variable. Also, IT flexibility should be explicitly considered. Using five case studies from the German financial services industry based on a causal model of IT business value creation reveals that the process of IT business value creation indeed strongly depends on the alignment between business and IT. But it also turns out that actual presence of business competencies is crucial and that even superior IT cannot compensate for business competency deficiencies.