The next section reviews existing literature on AIS and information system development in SMEs. It shows that there are rather contradictory findings about AIS design in SMEs and there are ambiguous findings about the strategic use of IT in SMEs, which justifies further investigation into the fit of AIS requirements with AIS
capacity. The next section will explain the development of the research model, involving six hypotheses about six variables which are identified as likely to be associated with alignment, and explains the chosen method for measuring alignment. In the next section, details of the sample used are provided. Then cluster analysis is used to identify two alignment groups: those with AIS alignment and those which are not-aligned. These two groups are used to test the research hypotheses. In the next section the results are discussed, the theoretical and practical implications are described and the limitations of the study are identified