Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, Weatherhead School of Management

We examine business transformation projects and ask why their success rate continues to be low. Past research suggests that business transformation is enabled by the level of alignment between the business unit-information technology (BU-IT) department and related novel orchestration of capabilities. We conduct a mixed-methods study to understand the role and impact of BU-IT alignment in affecting the success of business transformation projects. The complexity of the problem and the lack of improvement in business transformation (BT) success rates suggest that a mixed-methods approach is appropriate to study this problem. We focus on identifying to what extent organizational unit and project-level activities converge and to what extent project managers can flexibly respond to external events. Additionally, we look at the impact of centralized IT decision making and the importance of unit-level organizational change management activities in affecting BT project success.

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen Ph.D. (Advisor); James Gaskin Ph.D. (Advisor); Philip Cola Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Information Technology