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Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in the field of information systems. In this paper, we conduct a citation and co-citation analysis on cloud computing research published in the 11-year period from 2004 to 2014. A total of 214 papers were selected from 20 leading academic journals in IS and management and 2 prominent international IS conferences for our analysis. In the citation analysis, we rely on the degree centrality and betweenness centrality to identify 41 important papers. In addition, our main path analysis reveals three development stages of cloud computing research: the incubation stage, the exploration stage, and the burgeoning stage. In the co-citation analysis, we employ a principal component factor analysis of the co-citation matrix to identify six major research themes: foundations, SaaS model, security and risk, literature review, adoption and impacts, and modeling. This is among the first studies to examine the knowledge structure of cloud computing research in the IS discipline by using evidence-based analysis methods. Recommendations for future research directions in cloud computing are provided based on our analysis.

Contradictory views exist regarding whether business–information technology (IT) alignment enhances or reduces organizational agility, and no consensus has been achieved. To disentangle this puzzle, this study takes both the intellectual and social dimensions of IT alignment into account and investigates how they influence agility in opposite directions through distinct mechanisms. Based on survey data from 429 dyads of business and IT executives, we uncover that intellectual alignment impedes agility by increasing organizational inertia, while social alignment facilitates agility by enhancing emergent business–IT coordination. We also find that social alignment weakens the effect of intellectual alignment on organizational inertia. This paper fills a gap in the information systems (IS) literature by providing a theory-driven explanation of the alignment paradox, which makes a significant contribution to both IS research and practice. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0711 .

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