Complex by Nature: Understanding Activity-Level IT Integration Misalignment

This study focuses on the persistent issue of business/IT alignment. While prior literature mainly focuses on business/IT alignment at the organizational and process level, we argue that examining alignment at the activity level can reveal new insights about IT integration and IS complexity. Drawing on a single in-depth case study at a large international FMCG organization, implementing a new IT architecture, this study reveals that activities within end-to-end processes are characterized by two distinct logics, being the activities cycle logic (planned or continuous) and invocation logic (real-time or condition-based). We find that these activity logics result in unique activity logic configurations creating specific requirements for IT integration methods. In cases where an activity configuration was matched with an incompatible integration approach integration misalignment occurred. To address the instance of misalignment we observed the introduction of additional technological components or adapting business processes, leading to increased complexity. We demonstrate that achieving business/IT alignment requires a multi-layer analytics lens, where by taking an activity-level perspective uncovers unique challenges that are often overlooked when taking a broader organizational or process perspective. With these findings we contribute to the business/IT alignment and enterprise architecture literature.