Towards a Deeper Understanding of Information Technology Governance Effectiveness: A Capabilities Based Approach (Prasad, Heales & Green)

Discussant Scott Paquette, Assistant Professor,University of Maryland

UWCISA 6th Bi-Annual Research Symposium, October 1-3, 2009

What to Take Away from the Paper• The role of organizational knowledge and flexible IT

infrastructure as defined by the IT steering committee, on firm performance

• IT steering committees have a positive impact on organizational knowledge, IT capabilities, and firm performance

• This study is an excellent basis for future work, now that the authors have established what the relationship is between steering committees and IT capabilities / knowledge

Questions Remaining• Could the paper’s use of RBV (Conner & Prahalad,

1996) be expanded to KBV (Nickerson & Zenger, 2004) based on the use of knowledge and decision making in the definition of governance?

• Why study the impact on customer service? Why is this as important as performance?

• How does shared knowledge relate to ‘common knowledge’ (Dixon, 2000)? If this is similar, then we can learn more about the knowledge required by steering committees

Questions Remaining• Is flexibility the key aspect of IT that is significant?

Why not innovative, adaptive, lean, aligned??

• What is the difference between senior management and the IT steering committee? Are they not the same?

• How does the findings of Shared Organizational Knowledge Internal Process / Firm- Level Performance match with the KM literature (Bontis et al, 2002, Carmeli & Tischler, 2004, Kearns & Lederer, 2003)

Questions Remaining•What does the literature on IT alignment

(Sabherwal & Chan, 2000, Chan & Reich, 2007) tell us about the relationship of an IT steering committee, the IT infrastructure, and internal processes? Can this add new questions at a more strategic level?

Final Thoughts• Does the knowledge / capabilities required vary for different

industries? What is the variance of IT steering committee effectiveness through different industries?

• What knowledge is required by IT steering committees? Where does it come from, and how does it flow through the organization?

• Can actions by steering committees affect management, operational and technological behaviors in the organization?

• Replace IT steering committee in the model with other governance mechanisms

Thank You

Scott PaquetteAssistant Professor

College of Information StudiesUniversity of Maryland

spaquet@umd.edu