| The changes in the environment of higher education related to globalization, immigration, rising social-economic inequality, the knowledge economy and cultural identity (Benjamin, 2003; Collis, 2003) are requiring institutions to make some basic strategic choices. One of these decisions is the extent to which institutions of higher education will make conscious decisions to effectively govern scarce and expensive IT resources. As the role of information technology (IT) evolves into an integral part of most organizations (Liew, 2006), there have been "dramatic technological changes that have transformed computing from a back room utility to a strategic organizational resource" (Ross & Feeny, 1999, p. 1). Every aspect of the mission for the university of the twenty-first century is supported by information technology (McCredie, 2006) and could be a major vehicle of educational reform (Dede, 1992, p. 10). As campuses have made funded huge investments in networking infrastructure, software applications, computer labs and smart classrooms, support services and subscriptions to electronic journals (Lippincott, 1999), the impact of technology has been wide spread and the technological changes that have transformed computing from a back room utility to a strategic organizational resource (Ross & Feeny, 1999). IT governance is the framework around which decisions about IT are made within an institution. It includes who makes decisions, establishes priorities and who is accountable for the actions resulting from the decisions (Weill & Ross, 2004).;The problem related to the growth in the use of information technology coupled with the growing dependency on and expense of IT is how to manage the required resources to maintain the technical infrastructure. This study analyzed the organizational process of implementing and managing governance of information technology resources in three universities using a case study methodology. The research was guided by the conceptual framework in Chapter 3.;The three universities were viewed as learning organizations that enact an organization response based on the pressures from forces in the external environment. The organization seeks to acquire knowledge from the external environment and interpret that knowledge using organizational processes. After the knowledge is interpreted, the organizational processes integrate the enacted organizational response. The institutionalization of the organizational response is analyzed based on the three organizational carriers from Scott (2001): culture, social structures, and organizational routines. Two of the universities had successfully institutionalized information technology governance while the third had not. The findings indicated a determinative factor for the success of information technology governance was the commitment and dedication of the CIO. |
