Contractual and Consensual Profiles for an Interorganizational Governance of Information Technology

Abstract

Two profiles of interorganizational governance of IT were obtained from interviews conducted with leaders involved in setting the governance mechanism needed to support successful IT collaboration with their business partners. Three attributes, based on literature from network governance streams, were used to uncover those profiles. They are the IT governance structure, the processes put in place to make decisions, and the roles of participants involved in setting the interorganizational governance mechanisms. Observed profiles share a continuum where the Contractual profile is at one end, and the Consensual profile is at the other end. Some performance variations among the two profiles exist, yet both profiles contribute to successful interorganizational relationships. These profiles were uncovered from seven case studies conducted in Canadian organizations. Through fifteen interviews with senior interorganizational IT governance committee members and IT executives, the critical IT governance mechanisms they employed were identified. Two cases are reported in this article, each one illustrating respectively the Contractual and the Consensual profiles.