Sociomaterial enactment drive of business/IT alignment: from small data to big impact

Business/IT alignment is an information systems research field with a long existence and a high number of researchers and represents a central direction on the thinking about the relation between business and the information systems. It aims to achieve a paradigm, one in which there is a high degree of visibility and availability of information, about the information systems sociomateriality. Complex-networks constitute an approach to the study of emergent properties of complex systems that strongly focuses and relies on models and measures, through which build the system interdependence. Several contributions of complex-networks are: topology always affects the function; separated from the domain; quantification of element's relationships; visibility and capture of emergent properties. This work expects to contribute for the appropriate use of complex-networks models and measure in the drive of the information systems alignment. This work considers an exploratory case research strategy. It uses an exploratory case developed in the field of information systems that directed its deployment to sustain the business development and evolution. This paper illustrates a profiling framework that introduces a global and elementary use of the sociomaterial enactment. From the analysis of the exploratory case, the paper infers drivers of the information systems Business/IT alignment. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.