Two important gaps exist in the business and information technology ( IT) alignment ( BIA) research．First，the social dimension of BIA implied the context with the hypothesis of CIO-CEO proximity cannot explain the new context without CIO-CEO proximity．Second，the intellectual dimension of BIA focuses on the“realized IS strategy”while ignoring the“intentional IS strategy”．In this paper，we address both of these gaps by considering the social dimension of BIA under the context without CIO-CEO proximity．A novel BIA framework，antecedents-prior alignment-realized alignment，is proposed based on strategic management theory． Case studies in China show that both business implementation success and CEO beliefs influence prior alignment，remedy the deficiency of IT success history and shared knowledge，and form the crucial path to realize business-IT alignment in the new situation．The paper reveals the mechanism to realize the social dimension of BIA without CIO-CEO proximity，which provides a useful guidance for Chinese companies．