Presented at the 14th 14th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance ECMLG 2018: From the article: "Abstract: Scientific literature and practices emphasize that organizations have to align their business strategies with their IT strategy. Strategic alignment of business with IT in organizations is not only a prerequisite for organizations to be successful or competitive but also positively influences IT effectiveness and leads to greater profitability. At the same time organizations have been struggling for a long time with the concept of strategic alignment. In this paper an enhanced concept of strategic alignment is given in such a way that organizations can practically use to align their business and IT. Based on scientific research in this study the existing concept of strategic alignment model, i.e. the relationship between business and IT, was enhanced by placing the discipline of information management between business and IT and thus making information management responsible for the alignment or linking of business with IT. This conceptually enhanced concept of strategic alignment was practically enhanced even further with the use of the Business information Service Library (BiSL) framework. This framework links business with IT on the strategically, managing and operational level of an organization. The BiSL process framework thus provides an description of the information management processes on the different levels of an organization that have to be implemented and carried out to achieve strategic alignment within an organization. With the support of three experts in the field of information management and BiSL, an enhanced Strategic Alignment Model was constructed. To validate this model 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted in eleven organizations. The results of these interviews show not only a strong and solid support for adding information management to the existing concept of strategic alignment but also indicate a strong and solid support for the use of the BiSL framework for implementing information management. These findings support the notion that the BiSL enhanced Strategic Alignment Model not only provides a conceptually enhanced strategic alignment model but also provides organizations with a concept of strategic alignment that organization can practically use to align their business with IT."
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From the article: "After 1993, the concept of strategic alignment is evaluated from the connection between IT and business to much broader definitions in which the connection between all business functions, horizontally and vertically, and later also with projects and stakeholders is mentioned. To achieve stategic alignment there must be a coordination between the strategy of organizations and those who contribute to the implementation of the strategy and the actual performance of an organization. This process is called Human Oriented Performance Management (HOPM). The HOPM model consists of four dimensions: strategy translation, information and visualization, dialogue and action orientation, and continues improvement and organizational learning. To measure the effect of strategic alignment a range of financial performance indicators are used. Based on a literature review this paper explores which financial performance indicators could be used to measure the effect of HOPM. The literature was selected over a period from 1996 – 2015. The research is not only focused on the top of the strategy map, but also on the cause-effect relationships in the strategy map. The underlying performance indicators in the strategy map can show on which figures the dialogue in the HOPM model about strategy implementation must be based. This dialogue is the input to action in which strategic alignment comes about. The goal of the research is to optimize this dialogue by looking for performance indicators that can show the effect of HOPM" The article is used for the course: 'corporate policy' minor MSMM (Masterclass Strategic Marketing Management).
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From the article: "Project execution in the construction industry faces major challenges, e.g. difficulty in coordination and cooperation. Operational procurement during project execution is no exception. In this paper we construct a maturity model, based on earlier work, consisting of six dimensions (goal, control, process, organization, information, technology) and five maturity stages (transactional-oriented, commercial-oriented, coordination, internal-optimized, external-optimized). The model can be used to determine the level of procurement maturity for each of the dimensions, and for the determination of a strategy for growth in the construction industry. With input from a major construction firm in the Netherlands, through simulating tooling, the model is evaluated for its contribution to growth in operational excellence. Results of the simulation show support for a relation between maturity growth and increased operational excellence." Recommended Citation Xing, Xiaochun; Versendaal, Johan; van den Akker, Marjan; and De Bevere, Bastiaan, "Maturity of Operational Procurement in the Construction Industry: A Business/IT-Alignment Perspective" (2011). BLED 2011 Proceedings. Paper 22. http://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2011/22 Affiliation: Xing Xiaochun - Swets Information Services, Netherlands; Johan Versendaal - Utrecht University, Netherlands; HU University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands; Marjan van den Akker - Utrecht University, Netherlands; Bastiaan De Bevere - Ballast Nedam, Netherlands.
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To obtain large-scale sequence alignments in a fast and flexible way is an important step in the analyses of next generation sequencing data. Applications based on the Smith-Waterman (SW) algorithm are often either not fast enough, limited to dedicated tasks or not sufficiently accurate due to statistical issues. Current SW implementations that run on graphics hardware do not report the alignment details necessary for further analysis.
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Outsourcing of business processes and information technology (IT) operations is an important trend in large and middle-sized organizations. However, outsourcing could affect the organization’s ability to align its IT with business strategy and operations. This article reports a qualitative study into the relationship between IT outsourcing (ITO) and business and IT alignment. It aims to provide recommendations for outsourcers and service providers on how outsourcing relationships should develop in order to support business and IT alignment. The research question of the study is “What is the effect of IT outsourcing on the business and IT alignment of companies that have outsourced their IT?”After a review of relevant literature and concepts, four cases are reported. The study revealed that a higher level of motivation for outsourcing paired with a higher level of the relationship between outsourcer and service provider and with a higher level of alignment maturity of the outsourcer. The study also showed that the ITO relationship is influenced by organizational turbulence on one or either side of the relationship and that the service providers tend to assess the relationship on a higher level than the outsourcers. These conclusions provide relevant directions for both outsourcers and service providers for improvement of the their relationship
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The current food environment in The Netherlands is considered obesogenic. Eighty percent of the products in supermarkets are unhealthy. The Wheel of Five is the well-established, science-based Dutch food-based dietary guideline (FBDG) developed to stimulate healthier choices. In addition, simple directions on food packaging, such as front-of-package (FOP) health logos, could also be helpful. However, these tools should be in line with each other, in order not to confuse the consumer. To study this, we evaluated two FOP nutrient profiling systems (NPSs) for their alignment with the Wheel of Five: Choices five-level criteria and Nutri-Score. For this, a small but representative sample of 124 products was selected from the Dutch food composition database (NEVO). For these products, the scores for Choices and Nutri-Score were calculated using the published criteria, whilecompliance with the Wheel of Five was established by using the criteria from Netherlands Nutrition Center (NNC). The Wheel of Five food groups were used to categorize the products. Differences between the Wheel of Five and Choices are smaller than with Nutri-Score, concluding that Choices ismore consistent with the Wheel of Five and might be an attractive alternation for a FOP health logo on the Dutch market.
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The complexity of Information Technology (IT) is increasing; so are customer expectations. Consequently it is not easy for especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to keep track of all IT-developments, let alone leverage them in business operations with the aim to satisfy increasingly demanding customers. This also holds for the health care sector. This research is focussed on first line health care, and deals with the following research question; ‘which IT capabilities do SMEs within the first line health care sector need to have at their disposal in order to reach Business/IT-Alignment (BITA) maturity?’ Using the best practices ITIL, ASL and BiSL (cf. Bon, et al. 2007), IT capabilities are formulated. Based on the theory of Luftman (2000) business/IT-alignment and maturity is measured. Quantitative research of 123 first line health care SMEs in the Netherlands, confirms a moderate to strong correlation between the IT capability constructs ‘Organisation’, ‘Processes’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘People’ on the one hand, and BITA maturity on the other. The results indicate that SMEs within the first line health care sector should invest in IT capabilities related to the enterprise's ‘Organisation’ and ‘Processes’ to strive for increased business and IT maturity.
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Although workplace design and management are gaining more and more attention from modern organizations, workplace research is still very fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines in academia. There are several books on the market related to workplaces, facility management (FM), and corporate real estate management (CREM) disciplines, but few open up a theoretical and practical discussion across multiple theories from different fields of studies. Therefore, workplace researchers are not aware of all the angles from which workplace management and effects of workplace design on employees has been or could be studied. A lot of knowledge is lost between disciplines, and sadly, many insights do not reach workplace managers in practice. Therefore, this new book series is started by associate professor Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) and postdoc researcher Vitalija Danivska (Aalto University, Finland) as editors, published by Routledge. It is titled ‘Transdisciplinary Workplace Research and Management’ because it bundles important research insights from different disciplinary fields and shows its relevance for both academic workplace research and workplace management in practice. The books will address the complexity of the transdisciplinary angle necessary to solve ongoing workplace-related issues in practice, such as knowledge worker productivity, office use, and more strategic workplace management. In addition, the editors work towards further collaboration and integration of the necessary disciplines for further development of the workplace field in research and in practice. This book series is relevant for workplace experts both in academia and industry. This first book in the series focuses on the employee as a user of the work environment. The 21 theories discussed and applied to workplace design in this book address people’s ability to do their job and thrive in relation to the office workplace. Some focus more on explaining why people behave the way they do (the psychosocial environment), while others take the physical and/or digital workplace quality as a starting point to explain employee outcomes such as health, satisfaction, and performance. They all explain different aspects for achieving employee-workplace alignment (EWA) and thereby ensuring employee thriving. The final chapter describes a first step towards integrating these theories into an overall interdisciplinary framework for eventually developing a grand EWA theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003128830, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
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The importance of sustainability is rapidly increasing and by now has an increasing impact on the operations of organizations. In modern organizations many of the business processes are supported by IT, which makes the relation between sustainability and IT an important subject. However, how to integrate business strategy with IT operations in relation to sustainability is unclear. In this paper we focus on the role of Enterprise Architecture in this process and try to answer “How Enterprise Architecture may contribute in the traceable transformation from sustainability principles towards requirements on Green IT in the field of higher education.” Based on a literature study and qualitative research at different organizations we adapted the Sustainable Information Systems Management (SISM) model of Erek et al (2012). The SISM Revisited model not only guides organizations in identifying areas of interest for aligning the sustainability strategy of an organization with its IS/IT activities, but we expect it will be useful to implement sustainability in organizations as well.
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Background Physical activity after bariatric surgery is associated with sustained weight loss and improved quality of life. Some bariatric patients engage insufficiently in physical activity. The aim of this study was to examine whether and to what extent both physical activity and exercise cognitions have changed at one and two years post-surgery, and whether exercise cognitions predict physical activity. Methods Forty-two bariatric patients (38 women, 4 men; mean age 38 ± 8 years, mean body mass index prior to surgery 47 ± 6 kg/m²), filled out self-report instruments to examine physical activity and exercise cognitions pre- and post surgery. Results Moderate to large healthy changes in physical activity and exercise cognitions were observed after surgery. Perceiving less exercise benefits and having less confidence in exercising before surgery predicted less physical activity two years after surgery. High fear of injury one year after surgery predicted less physical activity two years after surgery. Conclusion After bariatric surgery, favorable changes in physical activity and exercise cognitions are observed. Our results suggest that targeting exercise cognitions before and after surgery might be relevant to improve physical activity.
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