Who Decides What? : IT Governance - Prioritization & Outcome

Abstract: Introduction. This bachelor thesis concerns the subject of IT Governance, how organizations prioritize and decides IT-related issues. The thesis will approach how Swedish Small-to-Medium sized Enterprises, which are considered successful, governs IT-related issues. Theoretical Framework. In order to conduct this research, the Governance Arrangement Matrix, created by MIT Sloan 2003, is applied which was also incorporated in a global study by Weill in 2003. The matrix involves five different decisions domains within IT and different corporate archetypes divided by stakeholder involvement.  The compiled data will thus be analyzed and mapped against Weill's study to derive the contemporary decision structure in Swedish SME's and create a comparison to map any alterations that might have occurred. Method. Through utilizing an online-survey and conducting telephone interviews, 108 responses from Swedish SME's provided the necessary data to map the contemporary decision-structure within IT in a deductive manner to both utilize quantitative and qualitative data, creating an understanding of the derived outcome. The analysis will provide an understanding for organizations to see the fit between business objectives and IT-usage, creating future possibilities for organizations to further optimizes their alignment between the business and IT. The main conclusions from this thesis could be summarized as follow: Results. The involvement of the board-of-directors has become more frequent, and with the inclusion of a Chief Information Officer, the collaboration throughout the corporate hierarchy enables a broader understanding of the impact of IT. Although that this approach was the most frequent selected archetype, the decisions relating to IT acquisitions and architecture, the majority of responses showed indications relating these areas to be decided by CIO/IT-department thus in conclusion: the knowledge that CIO/IT-departments has are sufficient to support the everyday business need. Furthermore, the differences found between this research and the underlying study by Weill, indicates that IT is considered a multi-dimensional problem that needs constant supervision and that the view upon prioritizations and governance has been altered.