Abstract Virtual business communities (VBC) are virtual networks of people who share common interests and comprise online software platforms that enables the fast exchange of information, collaboration and business interactions. From 2011 to 2015, we developed a design science research to create a VBC platform for an agricultural cluster of flower growers in the South of Brazil. The goal of this platform was to help to structure and strengthen this cluster by bringing together buyers and sellers while fostering cooperation to boost cluster competitiveness and economic development in the region. However, a number of challenges surfaced during the process, which led to a failure in the VBC platform's diffusion. We adopted a sociomaterial perspective based on the mangle of practice concept (Pickering, 1993) to investigate this failure, by analyzing the key challenges involved in developing a VBC platform in an agricultural context. As its main result, this paper reveals the mangling process during the design and application of the VBC platform and details the different instances of tuning between the participants and the technology. We observed resistance and factors that weakened cooperation and resulted in a lack of governance rules, which are key to the success of a VBC platform.

A preocupação dos executivos de negócios em identificar e implementar práticas de alinhamento estratégico (AE) e, conseqüentemente, melhorar processos de negócios e de gestão tem sido um assunto prioritário nos últimos anos. Diante disso, organizações brasileiras desenvolvem práticas de alinhamento, que são efetivadas de forma parcial ou intuitiva. Além disso, essas práticas podem ocorrer em diferentes intensidades, o que dependerá do setor de atuação. Dessa forma, esta pesquisa buscou identificar e comparar as principais práticas de AE e seu nível de maturidade em organizações industriais e de serviço, no Rio Grande do Sul. Para isso, foi realizada uma survey, que adotou um instrumento de pesquisa baseado no modelo de maturidade de AE de Luftman (2000) e no modelo operacional de AE de Brodbeck e Hoppen (2003), com executivos de negócios de 52 organizações do Estado de Rio Grande do Sul. Os resultados mais relevantes demonstraram que não existem grandes diferenças entre as práticas desenvolvidas pelas organizações industriais e de serviços. Assim, ambos os tipos de organizações apresentam um nível de maturidade em que a tecnologia da informação (TI) é percebida e utilizada como facilitador operacional.

The concern of business executives in identifying and implementing practices of Strategic Alignment and, consequently, to improve management and business processes has been a priority subject in the last years. Thus, Brazilian organizations develop alignment practices that are being accomplished in partial or intuitive way. Moreover, these practices can be present in different intensities depending on the sector. Thereby, this research looked for identifying and comparing the main practices of SA and its levels of maturity in industrial and service organizations in Rio Grande do Sul. For this propose, was executed a survey adopting an instrument research based on the Business Alignment Maturity Model by Luftman (2000) and on the Strategic Alignment Operational Model by Brodbeck and Hoppen (2003), this applying to 52 business executives from organizations of Rio Grande do Sul. The main results had demonstrated that there are no huge differences between practices developed by industrial and services organizations. Thus, both types of organizations present a maturity level where IT is perceived and used as business process enabler.