IT Managers’ Framing of IT Governance Roles and Responsibilities in Ibero-American Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Present standards guiding the corporate governance of information technology (IT) provide useful frameworks for organizations’ governing bodies to direct the effective use of information technology (IT) within their organizations. However, existing standards still fail to resolve the dilemma regarding the actual allocation of IT roles and responsibilities between governing bodies and IT management, while such an allocation represents a major challenge in many contemporary organizations. To advance on this issue, we explore IT managers’ interpretation of the allocation of IT roles and responsibilities to either the governing body or managerial levels in nine Ibero-American Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We used the ISO/IEC 38500 and COBIT standards to define a unique set of 212 management and governance activities and responsibilities. We surveyed 30 IT managers in Higher Education Institutions from nine Ibero-American countries and identified the divergence in the allocation of IT Governance and Management tasks between respondents and expert judgments. Using regression analysis, we show that the degree of such divergence depends on organizational contingency factors such as the formalization of IT procedures, centralization, the complexity of the organization, and the size of IT departments. This is the first study in the literature conducting a thorough analysis of IT task allocation between the governing level and the management level. This study is also the first to identify four organizational factors influencing the divergence between respondents and expert opinion regarding this allocation. The findings and propositions presented in this paper have the potential to extend our understanding of the IT governance dilemma in other professional organizations similar to HEIs.