IT Governance and Types of IT Decision Makers in German Hospitals - An Empirical Study Among IT Decision Makers

Felix Köbler, Jens Fähling, Helmut Krcmar, Jan Marco Leimeister IT Governance and Types of IT DecisionMakers in German Hospitals An Empirical Study Among IT Decision Makers Growing expenses for health care services in hospitals stress the potential of a well applied IT governance for cost reduction, productivity gains and a possible source for competitive advantages. The underlying explorative study analyzes the current status of IT governance through a survey among 206 IT decision makers in German hospitals. The quantitative analyses show that the most important requirements of IT managers for IT are the optimization and standardization of processes, that IT investments shift from administrative to medical IT applications, and that private hospitals display relatively higher IT budgets than do non-profit or public hospitals based on financial turnover. Further, two types of future IT decisionmakers are empirically identified. The types differ regarding their future role as initiators for process optimization and regarding the degree of involvement in strategic decision making.