Influencing the effectiveness of IT governance practices through steering committees and communication policies

Abstract

Information technology (IT) governance practices involve efforts by an organization's leadership to influence IT-related decisions through the location of decision rights and the structure of decision processes. Our focus is on two specific aspects of IT governance: IT steering committees and IT-related communication policies. Adopting an inductive research strategy examining qualitative data, we provide evidence on the influence of these governance practices from three small-/medium-sized organizations. While each firm evidenced a centralized IT governance posture, differences in these firms’ IT steering committees and governance-related communication policies were found to explain differences in the firms’ IT use outcomes. Inferences from our findings are presented in the form of propositions informing future research.