Emergent Forms of IT Governance to Support Global eBusiness Models

ABSTRACT A critical aspect of global e-business information technology (IT) governance is ensuring that it is integrated and that it generates economic viability of a company. Poorly thought through purposes will result in poor IT governance, the aim is to improve IT governance and business efficiency and effectiveness. A normative framework for global e-business IT governance is developed in this paper drawing on research evidence from information systems development and organization study. It proposes fundamental re-directions in global e-business IT governance thinking and it applies to companies that seek to integrate Internet, Intranet and Web technologies into their business activities in some form of an e-business model. Such integration is termed the fusion of IT and business to develop an e-business. The framework explains and elaborates ebusiness strategies for coping with emergent organizations and planned aspects of IT The basic premise of the proposed framework is that organization, especially virtual organization, is both planned and emergent, diverging from the dominant premise of central control in IT governance. INTRODUCTION In essence, information technology (IT) governance addresses how to design and implement effective organizations by creating flexible IT and information systems (IS) structures and processes. IT governance in a global e-business context has to cater for intensive competition, cultural diversity, and various fluctuating economic conditions. A static model of IT governance (see Eickelmann, 2000) and organization cannot adequately address these issues. There is evidence from researchers in IS development (for example Baskerville et al., 1992) and organization design (Mintzberg, 1979) that reveals the emergent nature of both. How global e-business IT governance can be conducted is addressed in this paper on the basis of this body of evidence. IT Governance is "the organizational capacity to control the formulation and implementation of IT strategy and guide to proper direction for the purpose of achieving competitive advantage for the corporation." (Van Grembergen and Saull, 2000). The prime aim of IT governance is to contribute to business activity in terms of lower costs, satisfied customers and better quality products or service provided by a company. Governance assumes accountability, making improving the channels of accountability an important feature of IT governance, especially accounting for return on investment. Many problems need to be addressed by the IT function: weak planning, rapid business and environmental change, and management involvement are some. The emergent process of IT governance reveals that managers need to understand that they are neither all-powerful nor powerless to effect change. Rather, they are in partial control of emerging processes that result in new organizational designs. They need to consider the importance of global business management, cultural diversity, ethics and advanced production and information technologies, as the boundaries between the Internet and customer strategy continue to merge. This paper presents some fundamental re-directions in e-business IT governance strategy thinking and proposes a framework for global e-business IT governance and organizational design as both a planned and an emergent process. There is a difference between IT governance and global e-business governance. The focus of IT governance is to seek efficient and effective ways of using IT in business. It seeks optimal solutions. Global e-business governance is concerned with facilitating and managing business processes and relations among suppliers, partners and customers over digital networks, as well as ensuring efficiency and effectiveness. This difference underpins the need for fundamental re-directions. The reason for describing the re-directions as fundamental is that unlike previous digital technology, Internet technologies are fluid and seek to cater for contextual, situated and semantic real-time information management. …