Strategic alignment maturity of business and information technology at technical vocational education and training (TVET) organisations in Malaysia / Mas Hana Mohd Nor

Most businesses today adopt information technology (IT) as IT has been recognised to be an enabler and driver to an organisation's competitive advantage. This has led to aligning IT strategies with business strategies to maximise the impact of IT adoption in order to quantify the investment. Moreover, strategic alignment between IT and business is evident to enhance business performance for various industries and sectors. Hence, aligning IT and business has been a major concern and challenge to top management. Consequently, this scenario has called for a need to assess the alignment between IT and business to gauge the effect of the alignment. This research intends to assess the business-IT strategic alignment of non-public tertiary education institution in Malaysia, particularly Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) providers. Strategic alignment is being assessed by measuring maturity of six criteria; Communications, Competency / Value Measurement, Governance, Partnership, Scope and Architecture, and Skills; as in Strategic Alignment Maturity Model (SAMM) developed by Luftman (2000). Findings and results of the study presented in this paper showed these organisations to be later stage of Level 2 maturity. This supported Luftman and Kempaiah (2007)'s report that suggested education industry scores poorer strategic alignment compared to other industries. However, the higher score than what has been reported by Luftman and Kempaiah showed that these organisations being private organisations have taken efforts to improve strategic alignment. Recommendation of improvement actions to enhance alignment of each criteria are given by researcher. Results and suggestions presented in this paper may provide better understanding of alignment as well as to be a reference for other institutions in developing their strategic alignment path.