Tim Huygh

Open Universiteit Nederland | OU · Department of Information Managament

This paper investigates IT governance through the Viable System Model (VSM). We make a theoretical contribution by discussing why IT governance can continue to achieve its purpose of creating and preserving IT business value. Additionally, we demonstrate how the VSM can be used as a lens to describe and diagnose IT governance from a practical persp...

A growing importance of IT for organizations results in a growing need for effective IT governance, which effectuates appropriate control over an organization's current and future IT use. The ultimate goal of this is to enable both IT business value creation and protection. However, the research domain of IT governance is somewhat hampered by a lac...

The rise of big data has led to many new opportunities for organisations to create value from data. However, an increasing dependence on data also poses many challenges for organisations. To overcome these challenges, organisations have to establish data analytics governance. Leading IT and information governance literature shows that governance ca...

In the digital economy, firms' IT resource investments represent a significant portion of their capital investments. IT governance processes are critical for companies to decide what and how to deploy IT resources and measure and achieve the expected business benefits. This study introduces and measures the concept of IT governance process capabili...

Despite the current popularity agile project management and scaling such frameworks, there is little academic research inquiring how to scale agile frameworks to be successful at the program level. Retrospectives, are understood to play an important role in attempts to successfully adjust scaled-up project frameworks. This research studies the part...

Following the rise of digital platform models, governments also start deploying this model for certain citizen services such as employment, education, care, health, or social services. This paper presents an exploratory case study of VDAB, Flanders’ (BE) regional government agency for labour services and its journey in adopting a platform model for...

Given an enterprise's complex business dynamics, there is an increasing need for agility in managing IT portfolios. Existing practice recommendations for portfolio-level agility have neither sufficient empirical validation nor consistent support from explanatory theories, leading to portfolio practices built around unique contexts and limited guida...

Rooted in the conformance perspective of IT governance, this paper sets out to research the role of compliance requirements in IT governance implementation, and to shed light on what aspects (i.e., processes) of IT governance are important under different levels of compliance requirements. Based on a large and diverse sample of organizations (N=256...

The current VUCA worlds demands from organisations to be resilient and sometimes even antifragile. The domain focusing on staying relevant is that of risk management. Information security is a sub-domain of risk management where the threats and response to the threats are very well documented. Within the sub-domain of information security there is...

Despite significant investments in training, many organizations fail to implement IT Governance. This problem is known as theory-practice gap. Organizational Learning has been suggested as an approach to overcome this problem but there is still lack of understanding about how Organizational Learning applies to the context of IT Governance. Therefor...

Over the past two decades, enterprise IT functions have enjoyed continued success in projects using agile development methods. However, the lack of ample empirical research on achieving portfolio level agility can potentially inhibit their ability to effectively govern IT investments while scaling agile practices to derive more significant benefits...

Organizations active in today's digitally transforming world require sound IT governance (ITG). Besides processes and relational mechanisms, organizational structures (e.g. IT steering committee) are a key component of ITG. In the context of improving ITG, most of the (limited) existing research however has focused on the process component. The goa...

Digital transformation is becoming ubiquitous as organizations increasingly rely on IT to create business value. As a result, IT strategy is increasingly intertwined with organizational strategy, with risks as IT becomes progressively more important, requiring both management and governance. Given boards of directors are ultimately accountable for...

This chapter discusses Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) as a framework for enterprise governance of information and technology (EGIT). The chapter starts with a brief overview of COBIT’s history. Then, the most recent version of the COBIT framework, i.e., COBIT 2019, is introduced. Next, the six principles that desc...

The main title of this book refers to the concept of “Enterprise Governance of IT,” a concept that addresses the definition and implementation of processes, structures, and relational mechanisms that enable both business and IT stakeholders to execute their responsibilities in support of business/IT alignment and the creation and protection of IT b...

This final chapter is structured around case studies that were performed as part of our research activities. All case studies deal with the organization’s EGIT arrangement (or system), but each case sheds an in-depth light on certain aspects of EGIT. The first case study contained in this chapter, i.e., the “University of Antwerp” case, deals with...

The previous chapter provided a high-level description of the “Enterprise Governance of IT (EGIT)” concept. This second chapter starts with discussing the genesis and evolution of EGIT, both in academic research and practice. Then, this chapter introduces mechanisms that can be used to implement EGIT in practice. Indeed, developing a high-level mod...

This chapter discusses the impact of Enterprise Governance of IT on business/IT alignment. The first question that is answered in this chapter is how an organization can measure and evaluate its current state of business/IT alignment. This discussion is supplemented by providing insights on the relationship between Enterprise Governance of IT and b...

Previous chapters described the concepts of Enterprise Governance of IT and business/IT alignment, as well as the relationship between them. The first chapter explained that the ultimate outcome of Enterprise Governance of IT is (the creation and protection of) IT business value. More specifically, Enterprise Governance of IT enables IT business va...

In order to take up accountability for governing digital assets and reap the associated benefits, we put forward three crucial board tasks: install, measure and report.

Chapter 2 of this book provides a generic roadmap for boards of directors towards governing digital transformation. The frequently used framework COBIT 2019 also addresses some elements of the involvement of the board in governing IT. The COBIT 2019 framework perfectly complements our roadmap as it allows us to provide a more elaborate discussion o...

To inspire board members seeking IT governance guidance, we have examined organizations that established certain governance mechanisms to (partly) tackle this challenge. As such, boards members can learn from their peers and translate best practices of other organizations to their own context and environment.

Digital transformation is all around us as numerous organizations increasingly rely on IT for the creation of business value. As a result, business strategy is more and more intertwined with IT strategy and risks coming from IT have gained importance.

Boards of directors are ultimately accountable for strategic decision-making and control in organizations [1]. Financial and legal matters sometimes dominate the agendas of board meetings, which is often reflected in board composition [2]. But what about IT-related matters? This is a prominent question in an era where IT is a crucial contributing f...

This book integrates theoretical advances and empirical data on Enterprise Governance in Information Technology (EGIT) with practical applications based on numerous case examples. The third revised edition of Enterprise Governance of Information Technology provides professionals and students with the most recent research advancements as well as an...

This title provides clear and readily applicable guidance to corporate board members on the involvement of boards of directors in information technology (IT) governance. Specifically, it demonstrates ways in which board members can execute IT duties effectively. Specific tools such as a roadmap towards digital transformation and a board-level dashb...

This research aims to explore the research domain of IT governance in the SME context. To meet this objective, a small systematic literature review procedure is used. Results indicate that IT governance in the SME context has been researched previously, albeit not extensively. There seems to be consensus among authors that IT governance is importan...

IT governance is concerned with the oversight of IT assets, their contribution to business value and the mitigation of IT-related risks. Emerging research calls for more board level engagement in IT governance and identifies profound consequences for digitized organizations in case the board is not involved. Against this context, this article analy...

This article examines the association between stakeholder functional role and the perceived level of IT governance and IT management implementation. Specifically, this article takes a COBIT 5 perspective, by first analyzing perception differences at the level of the implementation of the seven COBIT 5 enablers, followed by an analysis at the level...

It has been argued that optimal value creation from IT enabled investments requires a business case that is used throughout the entire investment lifecycle, as opposed to an approach that terminates when the investment is formally approved. This approach requires a rational transformation in the perspective on business cases in which they need to b...

This article provides an exploratory insight in the contemporary state of IT governance transparency in Belgian firms. Our findings show that Belgian firms exhibit low IT governance disclosure rates in general. We also find preliminary evidence that IT governance disclosure is positively related to IT usage intensity for listed firms, and that list...

This research aims to explore the research domain of IT governance in the SME context. To meet this objective, a small systematic literature review procedure is used. Results indicate that IT governance in the SME context has been researched previously, albeit not extensively. There seems to be consensus among authors that IT governance is importan...

This paper empirically investigates how adoption of IT governance and management processes, as identified in the IT governance framework COBIT 5, relates to the level of IT-related goals achievement, which in turn associates to the level of enterprise goals achievement. Simultaneously, this research project provides an international benchmark on ho...