Title: Enhancing organisational performance through information technology: an organisational and social strategic context

Authors: José L. Martinho; Carlos F. Gomes; Mahmoud M. Yasin

Addresses: ISEC – School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Rua Pedro Nunes, Quinta da Nora, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal ' School of Economics, University of Coimbra, ISR-Institute of Systems and Robotics, Av. Dias da Silva 165, 3004-512 Coimbra, Portugal ' Department of Management and Marketing, East Tennessee State University, P.O. Box 70625, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA

Abstract: Motivated by the increasing significance of information technology (IT) in today's open system organisations, the objective of this research is to uncover the relationships between business executives and their IT counterparts, which are essential toward improving organisational performance. In the process, a structural equation modelling is utilised to analyse the responses of a sample of 141 Portuguese executives. The results of testing the nine research hypotheses tend to underscore the significance of the trust between business and IT executives. Such trust is capable of fostering an organisational culture, which is conducive to the enhancement of the organisational performance. The ability of these business and IT executives to work together cultivates a knowledge domain, which generates effective solutions and applications to organisational problems. In turn, this contributes to improving the competitive performance of the organisation.

Keywords: information technology; IT-business relationship; shared domain knowledge; SDK; IT-business social alignment; organisational performance; business executives; IT executives; Portugal; trust; organisational culture.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2015.070887

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2015 Vol.20 No.1, pp.95 - 115

Received: 26 Feb 2014
Accepted: 07 Jun 2014
Published online: 31 Jul 2015 *

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