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Higher education institutions (HEIs) rely heavily on information technology (IT) to create innovations. Therefore, IT governance (ITG) is essential for education activities, particularly during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, the traditional concept of ITG is not fully equipped to deal with the current changes occurring in the digital age. Today's ITG requires an agile approach that can respond to disruptions in the HEI environment. Consequently, universities increasingly need to adopt agile strategies to ensure superior performance. This research proposes a conceptualization comprising three agile dimensions within the ITG construct: structures, processes, and relational mechanisms. An extensive qualitative evaluation of industry uncovered 46 agile governance mechanisms. Moreover, 16 professors rated these elements to assess agile ITG in their HEIs to determine those most effective for HEIs. This led to the identification of four structure elements, seven processes, and seven relational mechanisms.
With significant advancements in digital technologies, firms find themselves competing in an increasingly dynamic business environment. Therefore, the logic of business decisions is based on the agility to respond to emerging trends in a proactive way. By contrast, traditional IT governance (ITG) frameworks rely on hierarchy and standardized mechanisms to ensure better business/IT alignment. This conflict leads to a call for an ambidextrous governance, in which firms alternate between stability and agility in their ITG mechanisms. Accordingly, this research aims to explore how agility might be integrated in ITG. A quantitative research strategy is implemented to explore the impact of agility on the causal relationship among ITG, business/IT alignment, and firm performance. The results show that the integration of agile ITG mechanisms contributes significantly to the explanation of business/IT alignment. As such, firms need to develop a dual governance model powered by traditional and agile ITG mechanisms.