Abstract
This paper reports on the implementation of IT governance in a not-for-profit healthcare organization and considers how managerial strategies for this governance relate to the progressive management approach commonly called the Horizontal Organization. Discussion includes how IT governance was implemented and the mechanisms by which power and politics in the organization were harnessed to achieve strategic goals. In this case study, CEO support for IT governance was related principally to the need for fiscal accountability regarding IT investment aligned to the strategic goals of the organization. The case study showed real organizational gains in achieving best value for the investment dollar, accountable time-frames and cost-controls. The move enhanced the professional status of the IT Department, including more widespread acknowledgement for fairness and equity in its processes, an outcome commonly associated with horizontal management structures.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Australian Government, Department of Health and Ageing (2008). The State of our Public Hospitals, June 2008 Report, http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/health-ahca-sooph-index08.htm.
Bentley, C. (2002). Prince 2: A practical handbook. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Box, R. C. (1999). Running government like a business. The American Review of Public Administration, 29(1), 19–43.
Broadbent, M., & Weill, P. (1989). Leveraging the new infrastructure: how market leaders capitalize on information technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Brown, C. V., & Magill, S. L. (1994). Alignment of the IS function with the enterprise: Toward a model of antecedents. MIS Quarterly, 18(4), 371–4-03.
Brown, C. V., & Magill, S. L. (1998). Reconceptualizing the context-design issue for the information systems function. Organization Science, 9(2), 176–194.
Bryman, A. (2004). Social research methods (2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
Byrd, T. A. (2001). Information technology, core competencies, and sustained competitive advantage. Information Resource Management Journal, 14(2), 27–36.
Byrd, T. A., Lewis, B. R., & Bradley, R. V. (2006). IS infrastructure: The influence of senior IT leadership and strategic information systems planning. Journal of Computer Information Systems, Fall, 101–113.
Callahan, J., & Keyes, D. (2003). The evolution of IT governance @ NB power. In W. Van Grembergen (Ed.), Strategies for information technology governance. Hershey: Idea Publishing Group.
Cavana, R. Y., Delahaye, B. L., & Sekaran, U. (2001). Applied business research: qualitative and quantitative methods. New York: Wiley.
Chenhall, R. H. (2008). Accounting for the horizontal organization: a review essay. Accounting, Organizations and Society, May-July, 517–550.
Chenhall, R. H., & Langfield-Smith, K. (2007). Multiple perspectives in performance measures. European Journal Management, September, 2007.
Clegg, S. R. (1989). Frameworks of power. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Cooper, B. L., Watson, H. J., Wixom, B. H., & Goodhue, D. L. (2000). Data warehousing supports corporate strategy at first American corporation. MIS Quarterly, 24(4), 547–567.
Corbitt, B., & Thanasankit, T. (2002). Acceptance and leadership-hegemonies of e-Commerce policy perspectives. Prometheus, 20(1), 39–57.
Dart, R. (2004). Being “Business-Like” in a nonprofitorganization: A grounded and inductive typology, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly (33), available online at http://nvs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/290.
De Haes, S., & Van Grembergen, W. (2006). Information technology governance best practices in Belgian organizations. In R. H. Sprague, Jr. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Kauai, Hawaii (pp. 1–9). Los Alamitos: IEEE Comput. Soc.
Denton, K., & Richardson, P. (2006). Intranets for implementing strategic initiatives. Competitiveness Review, 16(1), 3–11.
Dixon, P. J., & John, D. A. (1989). Technology issues facing corporate management in the 1990s. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 247–255.
Earl, J. M. (1993). Experiences in strategic information systems planning. MIS Quarterly, 17(1), 1–24.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality volume 1: An introduction. New York: Pantheon Books (first American edition ed. vol. 1).
Foucault, M. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. In H. L. Dreyfus, P. Rabinow (Eds.), The subject and power (pp. 208–226). New York: Harvester Weatsheaf.
Galbraith, J. (1973). Designing complex organizations. Reading: Addison-Wesley.
Galbraith, J. (2005). Designing the customer-centric organization, a guide to strategy, structure, and process. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Glaser, J. P. (2005). Working with the CIO. Healthcare Financial Management, 59(7), 108–110.
Halford, S., & Leonard, P. (2001). Gender, power and organizations. New York: Palgrave.
Henderson, J. C., & Venkatraman, N. (1999). Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations. IBM Systems Journal, 38(2&3), 472–484.
Hill, G. M. (2004). Evolving the project management office: A competency continuum. Information Systems Management, Fall, 45–51.
Hiltz, R. S., & Turoff, M. (1993). The networking nation: Human communication via computer. Reading: Addison-Wesley.
ITIG (IT Governance Institute) (2000). Board briefing on IT governance (2nd ed.). Available on-line at www.itgi.org.
Introna, L. D. (1997). Management, information and power. London: Macmillan.
Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Ives, B. (1991). Executive involvement and participation in the management of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 15(2), 205–277.
Kendall, G., & Rollins, S. (2003). Advanced project portfolio management and the PMO: multiplying ROI at warp speed. Fort Landerdale: J. Ross Publishing.
Kingdon, D. R. (1973). Matrix organization. London: Tavistock.
Kirby, E. (2006). Helping AXA employees to live the company values through the intranet. The Business Communicator, 7(2), 8–9.
LaBelle, A., & Nyce, H. E. (1987). Whither the IT organization? Sloan Management Review, 28, 75–85.
LaPlante, A. (1991). Here come the hybrids. ComputerWorld, June, 57–61.
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2005). Essentials of management information systems: Managing the digital firm. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
Lin, G. (2003). Challenges of running IT like a business. ComputerWorld, 37(39), 46.
Luftman, J. (2000). Assessing business-IT alignment maturity. Communications of AIS, 4, 1–50.
Luftman, J., & Brier, T. (1999). Achieving and sustaining business-IT alignment. California Management Review, 42(1), 109–122.
Maglitta, J. (1994). Rocks in the Gears: Reengineering the Workplace. ComputerWorld, 28(40), 94–97.
Markus, M. L. (1983). Power, politics and MIS implementation. Communications of the ACM, 26(6), 430–444.
McGee, M. K. (2006). What keeps CIOs awake at night? Old and new worries, says survey. Information Week, September 18.
Microsoft Enterprise project management—IT governance and the program management office. Available on line at http://www.microsoft.com/Office?project/prodinfo/EPM/.
Miller, A. R. (2006). Driving Monro muffler brake with an IT dashboard, graduate capstone project cross-disciplinary professional studies program—Partial fulfillment of a master of science degree in cross-disciplinary professional studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Spring.
Miller, P. (2006). Well-designed intranets prove their worth. IT Week, October 9, 24.
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–886.
Ostroff, F. (1999). The horizontal organization. London: Oxford University Press.
Overby, S. (2004). How to run IT like a business. CIO Magazine, 17(14), 1.
Parker, M., Benson, R., & Trainor, H. (1988). Information economics: linking business performance to information technology. New York: Prentice Hall.
Peterson, R. (2004). Information strategies and tactics for information technology governance. In W. Van Grembergen (Ed.), Strategies for information technology governance. Hershey: Idea Publishing Group.
Raghupathi, W. (2007). Corporate governance of IT: A framework for development. Communications of the ACM, 50(8), 94–99.
Rockart, J. F. (1998). The line takes the leadership—IS management in a wired society. Sloan Management Review, Summer, 57–64.
Rockart, J. F., Earl, M., & Ross, J. W. (1996). Eight Imperatives for the New IT Organization. Sloan Management Review, 38(1), 43–55.
Romm, C. T., & Pliskin, N. (1998). Electronic mail as a coalition-building information technology. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 16(1), 82–100.
Romme, G. L. (1996). A Note on the hierarchy-team debate. Strategic Management Journal, 17(5), 411–417.
Sambamurthy, V., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Arrangement for information technology governance: A theory of multiple contingencies. MIS Quarterly, 23(2), 261–290.
Sambamurthy, V., & Zmud, R. W. (2000). The organizing logic of IT activities in the digital era: A prognosis and a call for research. Information Systems Research, June, 105–114.
Schonberger, R. J. (1996). World class manufacturing: The next decade. New York: The Free Press.
Schonberger, R. J. (2001). Let’s fix it, overcoming the crisis in manufacturing. New York: The Free Press.
Suomi, R., & Tahkapaa, J. (2004). Chapter XIV governance structures for IT in the health care industry. In W. Van Grembergen (Ed.), Strategies for information technology governance. Hershey: Idea Group.
The Standish Group (2004). Third quarter research report: Chaos demographics.
Van Grembergen, W. (2002). Introduction to the Minitrack IT governance and its Mechanisms. In R. H. Sprague, Jr. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Big Island, Hawaii. Los Alamitos: IEEE Comput. Soc.
Van Grembergen, W., & De Haes, S. (2003). Linking the IT balanced scorecard to the business objectives at a major Canadian Financial group. Journal for Information Technology Cases and Applications, 5(1), 23–50.
von Simson, W. (1990). The centrally decentralized IS organization. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 158–162.
Ward, T. (2007). Does your intranet pay its way? Strategic Communication Management, 11(2), 10.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Free Press.
Weill, P. (2004). Don’t just lead, govern: How top-performing firms govern IT. MIS Quarterly Executive, 3(1), 1–17.
Weill, P., & Vitale, M. R. (1999). Assessing the health of an information systems applications portfolio: An example from process manufacturing. MIS Quarterly, 23(4), 601–624.
Weill, P., & Woodham, R. (2002). Don’t just lead, govern: Implementing effective IT governance (CISR Working Paper no. 326).
Wideman, R. M. (2002). Comparing PRINCE2 with PMBoK. AEW Services Vancouver, BC Canada.
A Glossary of Distance Education Terms, www.tamu.edu/ode/glossary.html.
Wysocki, R. K., Beck, R. Jr., & Crane, D. B. (1995). Effective project management. New York: Wiley.
Xue, Y., Liang, H., & Boulton, W. R. (2008). Information technology governance in information technology investment decision processes: The impact of investment characteristics, external environment, and internal context. MIS Quarterly, 32(1), 67–96.
Yin, R. (1994). Case study research: design and methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Zmud, R. W. (1988). Building relationships throughout the corporate entity. In J. Elam, M. Ginzberg, P. Keen, R. Zmud (Eds.), Transforming the IS organization: The Mission, the framework, the transition. Washington: ICT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilkin, C.L., Riddett, J. IT governance challenges in a large not-for-profit healthcare organization: The role of intranets. Electron Commer Res 9, 351–374 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-009-9038-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-009-9038-0