The Role of Boards in Reviewing Information Technology Governance (ITG) as Part of Organizational Control Environment Assessments

IT Governance (ITG) is an important topic as US companies must now monitor ITG under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) (Hoffmann, 2003). Trites (2003) indicates that directors are responsible for strategic planning, internal control structures and business risk. The control environment is defined in Australian Auditing Standard AUS 402 to mean "the overall attitude, awareness and actions of management regarding internal control and its importance to the entity". This paper contributes to the knowledge of ITG by forming an integrated ITG Literature (IIL) which links prior research to four key dimensions of ITG. The paper presents a review of literature on ITG performance measurement systems which assess the ability of organizations to achieve these four ITG dimensions. A revised ITG Dimensions Model offered for consideration. The final contribution of the paper is to propose critical issues Boards should consider as part of their assessment of organizational control environments

Aligning Employees Through \u3ci\u3eLine of Sight\u3c/i\u3e

Aligning employees with the firm’s larger strategic goals is critical if organizations hope to manage their human capital effectively and ultimately attain strategic success. An important component of attaining and sustaining this alignment is whether employees have “line of sight” to the organization’s strategic objectives. We illustrate how the translation of strategic goals into tangible results requires that employees not only understand the organization’s strategy, they must accurately understand what actions are aligned with realizing that strategy. Using recent empirical evidence, theoretical insights, and tangible examples of exemplary firm practices, we provide thought-leaders with a comprehensive view of LOS, how it is created, how it can be enhanced or stifled, and how it can be effectively managed. We integrate LOS with current thinking on employee alignment to help managers more effectively benefit from understanding human capital potential

Environmental modelling of the Chief Information Officer

Since the introduction of the term in the 1980’s, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been widely researched. Various perceptions and dimensions of the role have been explored and debated. However, the explosion in data proliferation (and the inevitable resulting information fuelled change) further complicates organisational expectations of the CIOs role. If organisations are to competitively exploit the digital trend, then those charged with recruiting and developing CIOs now need to be more effective in determining (and shaping) CIO traits and attributes, within the context of their own organisational circumstances and in line with stakeholder expectations. CIOs also need to determine their own suitability and progression within their chosen organisation if they are to remain motivated and effective. Before modelling the role of the future CIO, it is necessary to synthesise our current knowledge (and the lessons learnt) about the CIO. This paper, therefore, aims to identify and summate the spectrum of key researched ‘themes’ pertaining to the role of the CIO. Summating previous research, themes are modelled around four key CIO ‘dimensions’, namely (1) Impacting factors, (2) Controlling factors (3) Responses and (4) CIO ‘attributes’. Having modelled the CIOs current environment, and recognising the evolving IT enabled information landscape, the authors call for further research to inform the recruitment and development of the future CIO in terms of personal attributes and the measurable impact such attributes will have on their respective organisation

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

HRM and Performance: What’s Next?

The last decade of empirical research on the added value of human resource management (HRM), also known as the HRM and Performance debate, demonstrates evidence that ‘HRM does matter’ (Huselid, 1995; Guest, Michie, Conway and Sheehan, 2003; Wright, Gardner and Moynihan, 2003). Unfortunately, the relationships are often (statistically) weak and the results ambiguous. This paper reviews and attempts to extend the theoretical and methodological issues in the HRM and performance debate. Our aim is to build an agenda for future research in this area. After a brief overview of achievements to date, we proceed with the theoretical and methodological issues related to what constitutes HRM, what is meant by the concept of performance and what is the nature of the link between these two. In the final section, we make a plea for research designs starting from a multidimensional concept of performance, including the perceptions of employees, and building on the premise of HRM systems as an enabling device for a whole range of strategic options. This implies a reversal of the Strategy-HRM linkage

Towards a theoretical foundation of IT governance: the COBIT 5 case

Abstract: COBIT, (Control Objectives for Information and Information related Technologies) as an IT governance framework is well-known in IS practitioners communities. It would impair the virtues of COBIT to present it only as an IT governance framework. COBIT analyses the complete IS function and offers descriptive and normative support to manage, govern and audit IT in organizations. Although the framework is well accepted in a broad range of IS communities, it is created by practitioners and therefore it holds only a minor amount of theoretical supported claims. Thus critic rises from the academic community. This work contains research focusing on the theoretical fundamentals of the ISACA framework, COBIT 5 released in 2012. We implemented a reverse engineering work and tried to elucidate as much as possible propositions from COBIT 5 as an empiricism. We followed a qualitative research method to develop inductively derived theoretical statements. However our approach differs from the original work on grounded theory by Glaser and Strauss (1967) since we started from a general idea where to begin and we made conceptual descriptions of the empirical statements. So our data was only restructured to reveal theoretical findings. We looked at three candidate theories: 1) Stakeholder Theory (SHT), 2) Principal Agent Theory (PAT), and 3) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). These three theories are categorized and from each theory, several testable propositions were deduced. We considered the five COBIT 5 principles, five processes (APO13, BAI06, DSS05, MEA03 and EDM03) mainly situated in the area of IS security and four IT-related goals (IT01, IT07, IT10 and IT16). The choice of the processes and IT-related goals are based on an experienced knowledge of COBIT as well of the theories. We constructed a mapping table to find matching patterns. The mapping was done separately by several individuals to increase the internal validity. Our findings indicate that COBIT 5 holds theoretical supported claims. The lower theory types such as PAT and SHT contribute the most. The presence and contribution of a theory is significantly constituted by IT-related goals as compared to the processes. We also make some suggestions for further research. First of all, the work has to be extended to all COBIT 5 processes and IT-related goals. This effort is currently going on. Next we ponder the question what other theories could be considered as candidates for this theoretical reverse engineering labour? During our work we listed already some theories with good potential. Our used pattern matching process can also be refined by bringing in other assessment models. Finally an alternative and more theoretic framework could be designed by using design science research methods and starting with the most relevant IS theories. That could lead to a new IT artefact that eventually could be reconciled with COBIT 5

Employee Line of Sight to the Organization’s Strategic Objectives – What it is, How it can be Enhanced, and What it Makes Happen

Employee_Line_of_SightWP01_06.pdf: 13661 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

HRM and Performance: What’s Next?

The last decade of empirical research on the added value of human resource management (HRM), also known as the HRM and Performance debate, demonstrates evidence that ‘HRM does matter’ (Huselid, 1995; Guest, Michie, Conway and Sheehan, 2003; Wright, Gardner and Moynihan, 2003). Unfortunately, the relationships are often (statistically) weak and the results ambiguous. This paper reviews and attempts to extend the theoretical and methodological issues in the HRM and performance debate. Our aim is to build an agenda for future research in this area. After a brief overview of achievements to date, we proceed with the theoretical and methodological issues related to what constitutes HRM, what is meant by the concept of performance and what is the nature of the link between these two. In the final section, we make a plea for research designs starting from a multidimensional concept of performance, including the perceptions of employees, and building on the premise of HRM systems as an enabling device for a whole range of strategic options. This implies a reversal of the Strategy-HRM linkage

Campaign for a Moral, Balanced Immigration Overhaul (CAMBIO), Strategic Review

In March 2014, Campaign for an Accountable, Moral, and Balanced Immigration Reform (CAMBIO) commissioned us to conduct an external review of the CAMBIO campaign. This report summarizes findings based on data gathered during an in-person focus group conducted with members of the CAMBIO Steering Committee in May 2014; a review of approximately 20 CAMBIO corporate documents and 36 internal meeting minutes; and 41 semi-structured telephone interviews conducted principally in June and July 2014