Leadership in business-IT alignment: implications of generation gaps

Abstract

Over the past few decades, information technologies (IT) have dramatically changed the way individuals communicate, work and live their lives. Organizations have been learning to explore the possibilities that technologies offer to enhance their employees' capabilities or the relationship with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Older and younger generations view, use, develop and define strategies to better manage the IT in the workplace today. Indeed, a significant number of daily operations in most performant companies are dependent on IT. Yet, business IT alignment remains as one of the most important issues among IT managers. This concern is justified by the conviction, already evidenced in previous studies, that higher alignment positively influences the business performance of companies. Also, alignment is made by people. As each person is unique, when it concerns the relation with technology, differences among people, such as the age, should be understood and taken into consideration. As managers from different generations lead business and IT in companies, different values and mindsets come into play, leading to different perceptions, motivations and attitudes, and consequently, implying different leadership approaches. Nowadays, three generations usually cohabit in the workplace: Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials. Although using stereotypes may be a problem, people from these generations have analogous characteristics which are interesting to depict in order to better understand their involvement in the workplace context and their leadership styles. This paper presents empirical results from a survey conducted among 408 business and IT managers from 238 medium size and large Portuguese companies. The results seem to show that different generations influence in a different way the alignment of business and information technology. Older generations seem to consider that their companies have a higher alignment maturity than younger generations. A sensitive analysis of the survey results a