Perspective dynamique de l’alignement : mise en comparaison conceptuelle et application au cas d’une coopérative agricole

Alignment is a major perspective for understanding the strategic dimension of information systems, i.e. their ability to contribute to the strategy of organizations and ultimately to their performance. The dynamic perspective of strategic alignment offers an enriched approach to alignment by highlighting the processes at work in a more longitudinal perspective. In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) successfully developed by Henderson and Venkatraman (1993) and the model recently formalized by Sha, Chen and Teoh (2020), named Process Model of IT-Business Strategic Alignement (PMITBSA). We use these two models to analyze the alignment carried out by Savéol company over a period of twenty years. The agricultural cooperative Savéol, specialized in tomato production, has made a number of strategic, organizational and information system choices that we analyze in terms of alignment dynamics. The analysis of the case shows the applicability in a longitudinal perspective of the Henderson and Venkatraman model and, to a lesser extent, of the Sha et alii model. Over the years, Savéol has implemented an alignment at the service of the operational execution of the strategy and favors an alignment path driven by the business strategy. Different lessons on the two models used are proposed.