Meta-modelling the strategic alignment model for aligning Information Systems support to specific application domains

In the current competitive worlwide market, Information Systems (IS) are today necessaries in order to support specific application domains or business areas that can give a strategic advantage to organizations. In this context, IS alignment that exists when the IS and business goals and activities are in concordance, becomes crucial. Several approaches have been proposed for building IS alignment. However, for aligning IS support to specific application domains it is necessary to deal with their specific characteristics. Reviewing the literature, IS alignment approaches addressing these specific characteristics have been proposed by extending the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993). Nevertheless, means for building new models from the SAM constitutive elements have not been proposed yet. To cope with this lack, we propose two metamodels: the SAM static view metamodel and the SAM dynamic view metamodel. The instantiation of these metamodels enables the build up of new models addressing the alignment of IS support to specific application domains.