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Managing the Strategic Alignment of Organizations 71<br />
it ‘ought’ to do and more on what is actually working in the aggressive e-commercedriven<br />
environment. Managers of tomorrow must therefore understand what ecommerce<br />
is; how the approach to this concept will be; and how it will affect the<br />
economic and social aspects of the organization. This chapter will therefore address<br />
the importance of economics on the strategic alignment of organizations. The<br />
chapter will firstly look at the strategic dimension of e-commerce in the organization.<br />
Next, the article will address the issue of e-commerce forecasting, IT alignment and<br />
e-commerce, the economic effect and the measurement of alignment while keeping<br />
the effect of e-commerce in mind. The summary of the chapter will be last.<br />
APPROACH TO THIS CHAPTER<br />
This chapter will use the interpretive approach to research as an alternative to<br />
the more traditional positivist approach. By using the interpretive approach, this<br />
chapter refers to such procedures as those associated with inferential statistics,<br />
hermeneutics and phenomenology. The framework proposed is to formulate a<br />
specific goal (economics, e-commerce and social aspects), subject to certain<br />
constraints. This approach will call for the active role of people in strengthening a<br />
truly collaborative research effort to maintain a peaceful co-existence between all<br />
the boundaries. Behaviours such as pointlessness, absurdness or confusion can play<br />
a role during the alignment of the strategies in the organization. The phenomenological<br />
approach will therefore help with the validity of the interpretation that this article<br />
will conduct.<br />
THE STRATEGIC DIMENSION OF THE<br />
ORGANIZATION<br />
Being competitive in the next couple of years will depend on the effective<br />
application of e-commerce. Organizations need to take a strategic perspective to<br />
ensure that investment in e-commerce is contributing to the organization’s business<br />
strategy. Increasingly, e-commerce is therefore being used by innovative organizations<br />
to facilitate the economic force of technology strategies now that reengineering<br />
has lost some of its lustre. Strategic alignment could also be defined as<br />
the extent to which the e-commerce strategy supports, and is supported by the<br />
business strategy.<br />
Economic advantage should be based on the capabilities of the organization.<br />
Organizational learning processes produce economic advantages (Sohn, 1999).<br />
The organizational 1earning processes obtain knowledge from e-commerce,<br />
Copyright © 2003, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written<br />
permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited.