Adoption and Benefits of Standardized IT Management Processes: IT Executives Perceptions of ITIL and CobiT

Abstract

The aim of this research is to understand how IT executives of different countries implement and perceive IT operational process improvement frameworks. We examine if IT operational frameworks, such as ITIL and CobiT, have an effect on the IT organization and on the relations between the IT organization and the business. While the implementation of such frameworks has been on the rise, limited research sets out to understand how the benefits of implementation evolve as organizations implement these frameworks. To answer this, two surveys were conducted to understand the perception of IT executives, one focusing on ITIL and the other on CobiT. Over 680 survey responses were collected and analysed. A total of 490 responses were received from companies that had implemented ITIL. We are interested in knowing the perceived benefits realized due to the ITIL implementation, the perceived maturity of the business-IT alignment, and the maturity of the ITIL processes implemented. Responses were used to compare how the benefits, challenges and maturity of the business-it alignment would evolve as the implementation maturity increases. Additional to these, further data was gathered from Australia and DACH (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) countries. A study is conducted to compare companies using ITIL in Australia, DACH countries, United Kingdom and United States, and shows that inter-organisational factors such as country, size and industry sector contribute to the variation in adoption of ITSM. Additionally, insights provide evidence that organizations implementing ITIL are concentrating on operational processes more than on tactical and strategical processes. Findings from this thesis also show that as the overall maturity of the ITIL implementation increases, so do the number of perceived realized benefits. When it comes to the challenges of implementation, results show that these decrease as the overall maturity of ITIL implementation increases. Findings also show that as the maturity of the implementation increases, so does the business-IT alignment. Further, a logistic model is completed to provide an understanding of which processes of ITIL are able to predict the realization of benefits. Processes which are likely to provide benefits are access management and financial management. The study was then replicated for IT organizations using CobiT. The focus is on understanding if the implementation of CobiT has an impact on business-IT alignment. As well the study concentrates on understanding if a positive impact is perceived due to the implementation of CobiT. In this survey, 190 usable responses were received from organizations using CobiT. Findings show that as the maturity of the CobiT implementation increases, so does the perceived business-IT alignment, especially in the later stages. Findings indicate that as maturity of implementation increases so does the perceived impact for all focus areas of IT governance. Using the approach developed from the Knowledge-Based View of the firm, we then explain why IT operational process improvement frameworks have an impact on the IT organization. We show that CobiT and ITIL contain characteristics of knowledge integration as proposed by Grant (1996). The thesis contributes to a better understanding of the benefits that IT operational process improvements, such as ITIL and CobiT, can provide to the organization.