The data in Table 2 indicated that firms in Cluster 1 had higher AIS alignment on each item than firms in Cluster 2. The patterns of the mean scores in the two clusters are consistent for all nineteen items. For this reason, Cluster 1 was labelled the ‘aligned’ group and Cluster 2 the ‘not-aligned’ group. The very clear and significant
separation into two groups was a surprise because more groups were anticipated, but the fact that no other groups emerged with combinations of low and high alignment on different items considerably simplified the subsequent analysis. There was no ambiguity in labelling these groups ‘aligned’ and ‘not-aligned’ and so these two groups could be used to test the hypotheses. Hence, one possible assessment of alignment is by associating firms into
one of these two groups