Title: A review of research trends in strategic information-systems planning

Authors: Erastus Karanja; Sandip C. Patel

Addresses: Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Fisher College of Science and Mathematics, Towson University, 7800 York Road, Towson, MD 21252, USA. ' Department of Information Science and Systems, Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, Morgan State University, 1700 East Cold Spring Lane, Baltimore, MD 21251, USA

Abstract: Research that addresses the alignment of information systems (IS) and business strategies has been a subject of growing interest to both academicians and business practitioners. Strategic IS planning (SISP) plays a major role in the alignment of IS strategy with the business strategy. Although a number of studies have explored various aspects of SISP and its role in the alignment, there is lack of review papers that examine specific research-trends in SISP. This article examines four aspects of recent SISP research, namely, research context, research subtopic, research method, and the unit of analysis by examining 132 articles from three prime IS journals specifically, ISR, MISQ, and JMIS. The results indicate that the most frequent research context was single-organisational, the most common research topic was alignment of IT and business plans, the most widely used research-method was empirical, and the most frequent unit-of-analysis was the top management.

Keywords: business strategies; strategic management; research trends; strategic alignments; SISP; strategic information systems planning; research contexts; research subtopics; research methods; unit of analysis; journal articles; prime journals; Information Systems Research; Management Information Systems Quarterly; Journal of Management Information Systems; single-organisational research; business plans; ICT; information technology; communications technology; empirical research; top management; business information systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2012.047145

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2012 Vol.10 No.2, pp.151 - 177

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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