Strategic Alignment in SMEs: Strengthening Theoretical Foundations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a vital part of the global economy in that they compose the vast majority of all businesses worldwide. In spite of these firms’ importance, they remain understudied in strategic alignment research. In this paper, we consolidate and extend the IS literature on strategic alignment in SMEs. We develop a set of theoretical propositions that outline the ways in which SMEs’ unique characteristics affect their ability to achieve and sustain alignment between their IS/IT strategy and their overall business strategy. In some respects, SMEs can achieve and sustain alignment as larger firms do, while, in other respects, they differ noticeably. We ground each of our propositions in the dynamic capabilities framework to strengthen the theoretical foundations of strategic alignment research, particularly in SMEs. We discuss the implications of our propositions and note theoretical issues emerging from the study of strategic alignment in the SME context.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".