Unpacking organizational alignment : the view from theory and practice.

The importance of alignment is widely acknowledged in organizations. Yet, we know little about how alignment is created or measured over time at multiple levels in the organization. This paper attempts to expand and enrich different perspectives and types of alignment that exist and occur in organizations. Throughout, we elaborate on how organizational alignment is understood and defined in the extant literature. Next, we propose a framework for examining different perspectives of organizational alignment emphasizing conceptual similarities as well as distinctiveness. Our core contribution is an emergent theoretical framework that expands on the concept of organizational alignment. We find that while conceptual overlap is problematic from a theory building perspective, the organizational context of alignment necessitates unique and varying ways in which this construct is practiced. We apply the theoretical framework to develop recommendations for senior leaders, human resource and operations managers. Finally, we present implications for both theory and practice. Organizations use a range of performance improvement interventions to enhance their business. Internal factors such as people and processes are continuously developed to optimize business performance. External operating factors such as the market environment, shared industry space, and globalization also impact the success and survival of organizations. Put together, the external and internal factors drive organizations to continuously change, adapt and improve. For example, the TQM movement in early1980s, and the more recent Lean improvement practices highlight process improvement methodologies that prescribed an internal and external focus on process, cost, customer and product quality. The global interdependence of markets, consumers, and suppliers created a complex value chain for organizations that presented exciting opportunities for growth as well as presented complex challenges for survival in the face of competition. In fact, the long-term success and viability of organizations is uncertain as constant changes in the external and internal environment can affect their performance. Interventions that help managers understand and evaluate their decisionmaking as it relates to enhancing the alignment of internal and external organizational components can help not only in managing but also driving performance. Yet, we know little about how alignment is created or measured at multiple levels in the organization. In fact, elaboration on organizational alignment in the literature is not only limited, but also underexplored. According to Tosti and Jackson (2000), alignment links key organizational components such as strategy, culture, processes, people, leadership and systems for the purpose of accomplishing common goals. The alignment of critical factors internal to the organization suggests Spring 2015 Volume 13, Number 1 Journal of Organizational Learning and Leadership 19 opportunities for identifying potential partnerships and collaborative integration of different functions, processes, and products. Furthermore, alignment also recognizes the importance of an organization’s connection to the external environment involving suppliers, new markets, customer groups, and shareholders (Powell, 1992). At a global level, organizational alignment can be viewed as connecting an organization’s internal network of people, products and processes to the external environment such as industry, national and global consumer, and producer markets for the purpose of strengthening organizational performance (Kathuria, Joshi & Porth, 2007). We position organizational alignment as a critical factor for enhancing organizational performance as well as for achieving a position of competitive advantage through the integration of people and processes. Alignment acknowledges existing complexities of internal and external networks of an organization’s processes, products, as well as people and emphasizes the potential need for creating stronger linkages that can further enhance, or serve the broader purposes and goals of the organization. Alignment can also enhance cross-functional fit between departments and units in the organization, as well as the linkages between strategy-structure-culture (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). The employee-job, employee-organization fit also emphasizes alignment albeit, at a micro level. Thus, the importance of alignment as a focal construct in understanding assessing and improving the performance of organizations at multiple levels cannot be ignored. Despite the intuitive appeal of organizational alignment, a strong absence of empirical validation has prevented the examination of this construct as a central theme of interest in the management literature. The purpose of our work is to examine how organizational alignment is understood and defined in the literature, identify important perspectives of organizational alignment, as well as elaborate on the implications for practice.