Professor Michael Kyobe, from the Department of Information Systems, won an award at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2009 for his paper, The influence of strategy-making types on IT alignment in SMEs. It was published in the Journal of Systems and Information Technology and was selected by the journal's editorial team as one of three highly commended papers in the past year.

The purpose of his paper was to evaluate and compare the influence of three strategy-making modes (planned, adaptive and entrepreneurial) on IT-business strategy alignment in SMEs.

He found that the planned mode provided better results than predicted, as it provided better understanding of business and IT objectives and higher growth in sales.

However, the adaptive mode encouraged participation of stakeholders in planning and improved communication and staff productivity, while the entrepreneurial mode facilitated immediate revision of plans in organisations operating in a dynamic and competitive environment.

This was the first attempt to investigate the relationship between strategy-making practices and IT alignment in South African SMEs.