IT Governance And Business Performance - A Resource Based Analysis

This dissertation project aims at developing a theory-based model that explains the positive impact of IT governance on the business performance of the firm. The research takes the perspective of the resource based view of the firm and integrates the economic theory of complementarities as well as the concept of relatedness. The increase of business performance is rooted in the generation of sustainable competitive advantage. The model is grounded on a thorough literature review and has been developed in eleven exploratory case studies with senior IT executives of major multinational corporations. The results propose that IT governance is positively related to business performance through the mediators IT relatedness and business process relatedness. It is argued that the latter two are complementary in the sense that they do not only increase business performance independently, but provide additional value if available in combination.