Factors Hindering Business-IT Alignment in Small and Medium Enterprises in China

Business-IT alignment (BITA) continues to be important for organizations and has received a considerable attention during the last 25 years from academic research. The organizational size has already been found to affect business-IT alignment but there are still a fewer research studies exploring BITA in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) compared with those studies done on large-size companies. Moreover the previous research studies have less focused on understanding the existing factors hindering BITA in SMEs particularly in China. Especially in regards to China, where there are millions of SMEs that are facing different challenges in achieving and sustaining their business-IT alignment. Therefore, case studies have been conducted in three SMEs in China that have no more than 250 employees and their turnover does not exceed 50 million annually. The data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with managers in these SMEs and also from SMEs internal documents and then analyzed thematically. The results of this study are a number of 26 factors hindering BITA in SMEs in China including seven new factors that are hindering BITA in these SMEs. The findings of this study could help researchers but also business and IT practitioners to understand the factors that are hindering BITA in Chinese SMEs and the actions to be taken for aligning business and IT strategy.