Why is aligning economic - and IT services so difficult?

M. Razavian, P. Lago, J. Gordijn

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
1 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Since its inception, Service Orientation has promised to offer seamless alignment of the business and IT aspects of service-oriented systems. Practitioners, however, often report that such alignment is far from being solved. Specifically, current research in aligning services either remains at a too abstract, strategic level, or is too technology-oriented to be really useful in practice. In spite of being an “old” problem, business-IT alignment is still a dilemma. What makes alignment so difficult? In this work we address this fundamental question by questioning what should be aligned, and what are the concerns hindering alignment. This paper explores the conceptual gaps around the notion of service in the two economic- and IT perspectives. By framing the core constructs of Service Orientation and contrasting those constructs between the economic- and IT perspectives, this paper elicits five core alignment concerns. We illustrate the concerns using a real-life case study featuring an airport baggage handling system. The alignment concerns pinpoint promising solutions in which the alignment problem can be solved
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationExploring Services Science
Subtitle of host publication5th International Conference, IESS 2014, Geneva, Switzerland, February 5-7, 2014. Proceedings
EditorsM. Snene, M. Leonard
Place of PublicationBerlin
PublisherSpringer
Chapter8
Pages92-107
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-319-04810-9
ISBN (Print)978-3-319-04809-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Business Information Processing
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
Volume169

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Why is aligning economic - and IT services so difficult?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this