Exploring the relationship between IT governance practices and business/IT alignment through extreme case analysis in Belgian mid‐to‐large size financial enterprises

Many thought leaders are promoting information technology (IT) governance and its supporting practices as an approach to improve business/IT alignment. This paper aims to further explore this assumed positive relationship between IT governance practices and business/IT alignment.

This paper explores the relationship between the use of IT governance practices and business/IT alignment, by creating a business/IT alignment maturity benchmark and qualitatively comparing the use of IT governance practices in the extreme cases.

The main conclusion of the research is that all extreme case organisations are leveraging a broad set of IT governance practices, and that IT governance practices need to obtain at least a maturity level 2 (on a scale of 5) to positively influence business/IT alignment. Also, a list of 11 key enabling IT governance practices is identified.

This research adheres to the process theory, implying a limited definition of prediction. An important opportunity for future research lies in the domain of complementary statistical correlation research.

This research identifies key IT governance practices that organisations can leverage to improve business/IT alignment.

This research contributes to new theory building in the IT governance and alignment domain and provides practitioners with insight on how to implement IT governance in their organisations.