Exploring IT Dependency and IT Governance: A Canadian Survey

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) has developed guidelines in order to help Boards of Directors and executive teams deal with information technology (IT) governance issues. Further, accounting firms offer IT governance advisory services. Prior literature suggests that effective IT governance can provide economic advantages to organizations. It also suggests that organizations should design IT governance to be aligned with their business strategy or decision model, and highlights significant internal and external contextual factors influencing IT governance. However, there is a need for empirical knowledge focusing on the influence of one contextual factor on IT governance, i.e. IT dependency. The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify the IT governance mechanisms (structures, processes and relational capabilities) used according to different levels of IT dependency (defensive or offensive IT modes), and compare their extent of use between these IT modes. Based on a survey, results suggest that the overall extent of use of IT governance mechanisms differs according to the IT mode, and is greater when an offensive IT mode is used than when a defensive IT mode is used.