Corporate Governance and it Governance: Exploring the Board's Perspective

Information technology (IT) exceeds half the capital spending of large organizations (US Commerce 2003) and should thus be a major concern of boards. How corporate governance extends into the domain of IT, becoming IT governance, is not widely researched. Concerns of board members on IT features little in the literature and board members' views are rarely obtained by academic researchers, partly due to the difficulty of obtaining access. We aim here to add to that literature. We describe an Australian study that explores IT governance issues from the board's perspective, a grounded theory approach, and examine some propositions drawn from the literature that does exist. The study used the topical issue of the risks of electronic commerce to stimulate the respondents. A questionnaire instrument was then developed and piloted. Methodological challenges are then discussed.

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