Developing a dynamic model of business and information technology alignment with an agile approach

The purpose of this paper is to present a dynamic model of business and information technology alignment in agile organizations. Dynamic Capability Framework, an influential theoretical and managerial framework in modern information systems and agility research, has been used in order to develop the dynamic model of alignment. Based on alignment approaches, IT alignment is defined as the extent to which the IT mission, objectives, and plans support, and are supported by the organization’s mission, objectives, and plans. Therefore, this study uses fuzzy DEMATEL technique to find the relationship between information technology capabilities and higher-order dynamic capabilities, business capabilities, to identify dynamics of alignment and provide agility. To investigate the most important agility and alignment factors, data were collected through questionnaires completed by 100 experts and analyzed by SPSS and PLS software. In the simulation, a combination of fuzzy Dematel and system dynamics methods was used to design the dynamic modeling structure. The causal relationships and efficiency coefficients were calculated by using fuzzy Dematel method in MATLAB and Excel software. Finally, the dynamic model was designed by Vensim software. According to the results, “IT learning capability” is the most important factor that has the most impact on other factors and “Business responding capability” takes the highest effect from the system.