IT Governance Practices in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Recommendations from an Empirical Study

Much has been learned through IT governance research about the nature of ITrelated decisions, the location of decision rights for these decisions, and governance mechanisms applied to facilitate associated decision processes in large organisations. Our knowledge about IT governance structures in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), on the other hand, is quite limited. Adopting a qualitative and inductive approach, this study examines the nature and influence of IT governance in SMEs through interviews with executives from three SMEs. Our results demonstrate that IT decision authority was centralized in all three SMEs but that senior management involvement in governance procedures and communication practices about governance policies were observed to explain differences in these organisations’ IT use. We propose recommendations based on the findings of this