AIS alignment and firm performance among audit firms in East Malaysia / Salawati Sahari

Investment in information technology systems involved huge sums of money. The situations face by number of firms is that, the investment may not be able to generate the benefits of using this information technology in terms of profitability. Thus, in order to ensure a return on the investment of this information technology system, it is a concern that the capacity shall be balance with the requirements. Meaning, too much capacity will be redundant and costly, but too little capacity (that did not meet the requirements) will not get the work done.
By employing Information Processing Theory, the results obtained are consistent with the prediction that when the AIS capacity and AIS requirements have high alignment, it will give positive effect to the firm’s performance. This study also reveals that different AIS characteristics have different level of AIS alignment. Among AIS characteristics that having high AIS alignment scores are speed of reporting, summary report sections, and immediate reporting had high alignment scores, whereas precise target, sub unit interactions, and market information had low alignment scores.