The Empirical Study Of Project Governance Impact On IS Performance

With the more and more dependency of the enterprises on Information Technologies, theinvestments to IS of enterprises are growing step by step. The enterprises are paying more andmore attention on the control of IS investment. However, the current IS project governance focuson the area of IS project management. All the papers are only project-oriented, it separate fromthe IS projects to IS systems. Also, the theories study of IS Project focus on the project teamlevel, just pay attention on the project itself. This project management oriented study ignores thekey points for project success or failure is the separation between provider and Beneficiary andthis key issue cannot be solved by project manager. The separation leads to the unmatching ofthe interests between IT department and business department, results many conflicts. For theefficiency of IS project decision making and the effectiveness of IS project execution, it needs thereasonable mechanism of IS project governance to make the IS project decision based on theinterest of enterprises rather than department or personnel. This study sees the owners ofproject such as business units, high level leaders and IT steering committee as consignor and seeIS project manager as agent, this is the relationship of agency theory. In this relationship,consignor is behalf of business units and high level leaders and agent is behalf of IT Departmentor experts. So, IS project governance is becoming the core issue of IT governance study. For thesuccess factors of IS Projects, IS project governance and organization factors are being paid moreand more attention.This study review and construct the framework of IS project governance and control fromthree aspects: decision control&principal-agent, power distance&leader-participation, projectphase&performance measurement. Through the review, this study find the current study andtheories’ shortage on the practical instruction on real enterprises and setup an integrated modelto study the relationship between IS project governance with performance based on thepre-study. Then this study does analysis for the impact relationship between IS projectgovernance with IS project performance. Moreover, this study does the deeply analysis for theabove relationship. The organization factors such as leader participation, power distance havebeen studied in this paper. At last, this study did the analysis of IS project formal control wayssuch as results control and behavior control’s impact on project. The main works and conclusionsof the dissertation are as below:1. Review and construct the framework of IS project governance from three aspects:decision control&principal-agent, power distance&leader-participation, projectphase&performance measurement. Through the review, we find the current study andtheories’ shortage on the practical instruction on real enterprises. So this study setupan integrated model to study the relationship between IS project governance withperformance based on the pre-study;2. Based on the above model, this study explains and demonstrates the impact between ISProject governance to IS Project performance. The finding is that the governanceorganization and control mechanism has positive impact to IS project success. Also,during the project implement phase, At last, this study find the controls will positivelyimpact on project performance.3. Based on the above relationship, this study breakdown the effects of organizationfactors (e.g., power distance and leader participate) in moderating the relationship between IS project governance and IS project performance. We find that thegovernance organization and control mechanism have positive impacts on IS projectsuccess. More importantly, this study finds the relationship between projectgovernance to performance is impacted by organization factors. More importantly, thisstudy finds the relationship between project governance to performance is noimpacted by high level leader participate but only in project execution phase leaderparticipate will positively impact project performance.4. Based on the above relationship, this study breakdowns the relationship betweenbehavior control and result control for the impact on project performance and find thatthe replacement relationship between the behavior control and result control for theimpact to project performance also the IS Project Governance is positive to projectperformance.Key constrcuct’s definition of this studyThis study sees the owners of project such as business units, IT steering committee asconsignor and see IS project manager as agent, this is the relationship of agency theory.In this relationship, consignor is behalf of business units and high level leaders andagent is behalf of IT Department or experts. IS project governance are the activitiessuch as decision making and related machnism during the project initiation andexecution. Power distance is the level of company organization and democracy; Highlevel participation is the involvement level of high level managers; Behavior control isthe compliance orientated of the project control; Result control is the output orientatedof the project control. Project performance is the level of project on time, under budgetand user satisfaction.Innovation of the dissertation:It conceptualizes the new constructs of project governance, project lead based on theproject initiation phase and implement phase. The result shows that the steering committee andmachines with the high efficient decision making is positive impact to project performance. Onceproject enter implement phase, IT department lead will impact project performance positively.The project controls will impact project performance positively. This study identify the projectperformance based on different phase; it supplement the theory of Fama and Jesen for IS projectdecision making and control, also supplement the theory of Tiwana for different decision makingpower impact project performance.This study finds the organization factors such as power distance’s moderate impact on the ISproject governance to project performance. It finds that the impact from IS project governanceon project performance is depending on the power distance to a great extent. The IS projectgovernance will impact project performance positively if power distance is low, otherwise, will benegative impact. It finds that the result control and behavior control will impact projectperformance positively if power distance is high. It enriches the study of organization controlproject of Kirsch.This study finds the organization factors such as leader participation’s moderate impact onthe IS project governance to project performance. It finds that the leader participation has positive impact during project implement stage and it not illustrated in prior studies. It finds thatsometimes the participation of leader will weaken the effect of project governance. It enrichesthe study of Keil, Jarvenpaa, Ives for high level lead participation of IS project.It finds the replacement relationship between behavior and result control to enrich Kirsch’sstudy of project control.Compare with the pre-study which just focus on Application development or Infrastructureprojects, this study covers all kinds of cross-Departments’ IS projects and all major industries withcompanies’ global view and strategic view.