Romanian Economic and Business Review – Vol. 8, No. 3 79 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR BUSINESS – IT ALIGNMENT: A REVIEW OF CURRENT RESEARCH Ilir Kurti, Ezmolda Barolli and Kozeta Sevrani * Abstract Business-IT alignment still remains one of the three main research streams in IS literature, and from 1994 it constantly ranks among the top three concerns of CIOs. While a lot of research has been published around business-IT alignment in the last three decades, a number of models have been proposed to structure the concept into various dimensions and levels. However, only a few studies have been made regarding the critical success factors. Moreover, we were unable to find any systematically consolidated evidence in this regard. This is a major gap because research is collaborative venture and each researcher build on what have been found and understood before. After searching some of the most comprehensive science databases such as ScienceDirect, JStore, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink we could identify only six articles on the matter. Using the model proposed by Schlosser et al. (Schlosser, et al., 2012) to structure the alignment concept, our results show that most of the identified CFSs are related to individual skills and knowledge of IT and business executives. Keywords: critical success factor, business-IT alignment, literature review, human dimension, social dimension, intellectual dimension. JEL Classification: M10, M15, M16 1. Introduction Business-IT alignment has drawn researchers’ attention since the mid ‘70 (McLean & Soden, 1976). At an early stage, this often meant existence of a linkage between the business plan and the IT plan (Keen & Scott Morton, 1978). Nowadays, business-IT alignment generally refers to applying IT in a proper and timely fashion, harmonized with business needs, goals and strategies (Luftman, et al., 1999). After all these years, it still remains as one of the three main research streams in IS literature (Tanriverdi, et al., 2010) and from 1994 it constantly ranks among the top three concerns of CIOs (Luftman & Kempaiah, 2007; Luftman & Ben-Zvi, 2011). This continuously and increasingly interest in business-IT alignment derives from the fact that it is considered as the basic principle to realize business value from IT * Ilir Kurti, PhD candidate in information systems, IT Director at Ministry of Defense, Tirana, Albania, E-mail: ilir.kurti@mod.gov.al Ezmolda Barolli, PhD, Prime lecturer of informatics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Tirana, Tirana, Albania, E-mail: ezmolda.barolli@unitir.edu.al Kozeta Sevrani, Professor of informatics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Tirana, Tirana, Albania, E-mail: kozeta.sevrani@unitir.edu.al