IT Governance in Multi-business Organizations: Performance Impacts and Levers from Processes, Structures, and Relational Mechanisms

IT governance is more than ever recognized as a panacea by IT managers to ensure effective and efficient IT operation in multi-business organizations. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance impact of IT governance. In order to do so, the study takes the resource-based perspective, and integrates the economic theory of complementarities and the concept of relatedness. The proposed increase in business process performance is grounded in the generation of sustainable competitive advantage. The framework is investigated by using five exploratory case studies in multi-business organizations. The results suggest that IT governance is positively related to business process performance through the mediators of IT relatedness and business process relatedness. Furthermore, IT governance levers have been identified which might significantly increase business process performance.