Management Information Systems

Aligning information technology (lT) strategy with business strategy has been one
of the top concerns of practitioners and scholars. Despite the documented positive effects
of strategic alignment on organizational success, only few organizations consider
themselves in alignment. Although numerous studies exist about IT-business alignment,
the empirical studies based on strong theories have been rare in the alignment literature.
This dissertation attempts to fulfill this gap by proposing and empirically validating a
comprehensive strategic alignment model. Drawing on prior literature, we identified five
antecedents of alignment; centralization, formalization , shared domain knowledge,
successful IT history and relationship management. We further hypothesized that the
effects of these antecedents are mediated by the drivers of alignment, which are conceptualized as the level of connection of lT and business planning and the level of
communication between IT and business managers. Furthermore, the proposed research
model investigated the moderating effects of goal commitment of business executives to
achieving and sustaining strategic alignment and environmental uncertainty. The results
showed that both drivers had significant effects on alignment, and the effect of
connection is about twice that of communications. Our findings also support for the
effects of all antecedents except centralization. Finally, we found partial support for the
effects of moderating variables. Overall, the main contribution of this dissertation is the
development and empirical validation of a comprehensive strategic alignment model with
considerations for antecedents and potential moderating effects, thus extending the
alignment literature by differentiating the effects of dimensions of environmental
uncertainty as well as introducing the goal commitment and IT unit structure constructs,
and providing prescriptive insight for managing IT-business strategic alignment.

In December 2009, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) approved enhanced proxy disclosure rules requiring companies to disclose the board’s leadership
structure and the board’s role in risk oversight. Apart from general business risks, boards
are increasingly interested in Information Technology (IT) risks as it affects all aspects of
the organization (PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC], 2013). Since the effectiveness of IT
risk management depends on senior managers’ actions, this dissertation attempts to
answer the question of whether the maturity of IT risk management practices (the extent
to which management performs particular activities to identify, assess, monitor and
respond to IT-related risks) in organizations depends on the Chief Information Office
(CIO) reporting structure and the board’s leadership structure.

Business problem-solvers are finding it increasingly more
difficult to obtain sufficient information in the time required to
make a decision based upon the best alternative and lowest risk.
Because of the complexity of business. data may exist but be unobtainable
in the configuration required. This problem is observed
using methods of field observation and comparison. A facility
called the computerized management laboratory is hypothesized which
will provide the problem-solver with a facility to access the entire
information resource of the organization, to synthesize the problem.
to use the system to explore alternatives. and to reach a solution
which has a high probability of being correct. Based upon the
involvement and economic commitment. the management laboratory is
chartered to serve the information needs of management and to
provide a facility for the practice of management during the decision-making
process.

Efficient searching is one of the important design issues in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Among various searching techniques, semantic-based searching has drawn significant attention recently. Gnutella-like efficient searching system (GES) [29] is such a system. GES derives node vector , a semantic summary of all documents on a node based on vector space model (VSM). The node-based topology adaptation algorithm and search protocol are then discussed. However, when there are many categories of documents at each node, the node vector representation may be inaccurate. We extend the idea of GES and present a class-based search system (CSS). It makes use of a document clustering algorithm: OSKM [27] to cluster all documents on a node into several classes. Each class can be viewed as a virtual node. As a result, class vector replaces node vector and plays an important role in class-based topology adaptation and search process, which makes CSS very efficient. Our simulation demonstrates that CSS outperforms GES.

This study investigates the relationship of executive fire officers' use of strategic thinking skills and their proficiency using information and communication technology. A non-experimental quantitative study design was employed. The study consisted of 400 graduates of the National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer Program. The use of strategic thinking skills was measured by the Strategic Thinking Questionnaire (STQv6) (Pisapia & Reyes-Guerra, 2007). The use of information and communication technology tools was measured by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Fluency Questionnaire (Hilberg, 2007). The EFOs' strategic thinking capabilities of systems thinking (3.58 +/- .447) and reflecting (3.82 +/- .445) compared to previously reported samples from the literature, both empirically and theoretically. Depending upon the sample, some means were significantly higher and others were significantly lower. The strategic thinking questionnaire and the ICT fluency questionnaire were not directly correlated to one another ; however, there were some strong correlations within their subscales. ICT fluency and ICT comfort were highly correlated (r = .516), as well as systems thinking and reflecting (r = .688) at the 0.05 level. There was a significant correlation between age and ICT comfort (r = -.235), as well as between years of experience and ICT comfort (r = -.203) at the 0.05 level. Age moderated the relationship between systems thinking*reflection, and ICT comfort. Race moderated the relationship between systems thinking*reflection, and ICT education/training. This research was significant because it was the first time that Executive Fire Officers have been studied regarding their strategic thinking capabilities and their information and communications technology fluency.