Abstract: The paradox between Information Technology (IT) alignment and agility has been a focus of academic debate. In order to explore whether IT alignment enhances or impedes agility, this paper divides IT alignment into intellectual alignment and social alignment, builds the research model of intellectual alignment, social alignment, organizational agility, environmental dynamism and firm performance, and examines impacts of intellectual alignment and social alignment on agility and the moderating effects of environmental dynamism. Data analysis and model estimation are performed on matched-pair survey of 429 Chinese shipbuilding enterprises by using structural equation model. The results show that intellectual alignment has no impact on agility, while social alignment positively affects agility. Environmental dynamism negatively moderates the relationship between intellectual alignment and agility, but has no moderating impact on the social alignment and agility. At the same time, agility fully mediates the influence of social alignment on firm performance. The above results provide a theoretical explanation for the paradoxical relationship between IT alignment and organizational agility, and also provide practical guidelines for firms to promote agility and ultimately improve performance.

Key words: intellectual alignment, social alignment, organizational agility, environmental dynamism, firm performance