Strategic and operations impacts of information technology in brazilian companies

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) applications assume nowadays a distinguished role, although there are different visions about the extension and the nature of this role. Besides, the discussion concerning the effective return of IT investments is still object of wide debate. Meanwhile, it is quite spread and accepted the need of a continuous strategic alignment between IT and business. This paper intends to study practices adopted in Brazilian companies for strategic alignment between IT and businesses. These practices should lead to IT effectiveness. The research aims to investigate especially some subjects: a) How IT enables or even creates business strategies; b) How companies conduct the development and implementation of strategic uses of the IT. For this purpose, the methodological adopted approach was multiple cases study. Three cases were selected and data was obtained through semi-structures interviews with different agents from different hierarchic levels, both from IT and business area