COBIT 5 as IT Governance Framework and Implementation Method - A Literature Mapping

Organizational decision-makers are confronted with pervasive Information Technology. Investments in Information Technology form a large portion of total investments, requiring a focus on the governance of IT. One prevalent IT Governance Framework is COBIT 5. Despite its widespread use, there is a claimed lack of research on COBIT 5. To validate this claim, we have looked at academic literature and mapped the results along different criteria. Our key findings suggest that the peak of COBIT 5 publications already seems passed, that most publications deal with the contextual use of COBIT 5, that this context is still very security/risk and governance focussed, and that the new concepts introduced in COBIT 5, and COBIT 5 as an artefact itself, are hardly researched. We conclude that COBIT 5 needs more thorough academic research at the conceptual level, and that future work should start with the development of a conceptual model of COBIT 5, making COBIT 5 truly researchable as an artefact.