Question

Topic: IT Board of Directors Attention Deficit

Establish a introduction

Who has recently addressed this topic in today journals?

What is the literature gaps for this topic?

The justification of why we should care about this topic.

Answer 1

Introduction to  IT Board of Directors Attention Deficit:

Given the ever-increasing importance of information technology (IT) to corporate success, board scrutiny of IT activities is a critical issue. This study conducted interviews with board chairs and board members of 17 medium to large corporations, most with global operations. The question to them: How much attention does your board give to a range of IT-related issues, specifically, the CIO's IT vision for the company, the IT strategic plan, major IT application decisions, IT leadership, IT functional structure, IT function effectiveness, IT risk and exposure, and whether or not IT applications provide competitive advantage? We also interviewed the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) at these 17 firms about their view of what their boards ought to be considering.We found an IT attention deficit in these boards. The CIOs were nearly unanimous that boards should pay attention to: the IT vision, the IT strategic plan, IT competitive advantage, IT effectiveness, IT risk, and very large application development decisions and projects. All 17 boards were unanimous only on paying attention to IT risk. One-half the boards of the financial services firms had discussed the other topics. But none of the boards of the primary resource firms (energy, mining, forestry, agricultural products, and oil exploration and extraction) had discussed the other topics.After recounting the specifics of this research, we suggest six ways boards can reduce their IT attention deficit:

1. include IT on the board agenda,
2. invite the CIO to board meetings,
3. elicit brief CIO presentations,
4. recruit IT experience onto the board,
5. get the board talking about IT, and
6. realize that boards now operate in an IT era.

Who has recently addressed this topic in today journals?

There remains slight understanding of the role of the board in IT governance (DeHaes and VanGrembergen, 2005;Huff et. al., 2006;Jordan and Musson, 2004;Trites, 2004). This limited understanding is displayed by the lack of one, generally accepted, definition for IT governance (DeHaes and VanGrembergen, 2005;Simonsson and Johnson, 2005). This research adopts one of the most widely cited definitions:

Interview, review of reports 1 organization (Belgian Financial Group) Interviewed IT and business managers, CIO, IT governance project manager, member of the board, executive committee Executive Committee reports to the board monthly on major events and projects IT Strategy Committee consists of 3 board members; however, it "did not enable a more thorough and ongoing involvement of boards in IT governance" (p.5) The "Board works at a very high, strategic level and they are consequently not the 'steering power' for IT or IT governance" (p.5) Huff et al., 2006 How are boards dealing with IT governance?

The questions include topics such as the strategic importance of IT, competitors' use of IT, business continuity, and IT risks. Nolan and McFarlan (2005) Huff et al., 2006;Jordan and Musson, 2004). For example, in a study of eight financial services firms a lack of involvement of the boards was found (Huff et al., 2006) (2005), the responsibility for IT strategy is often delegated to management levels below the board

What is the literature gaps for this topic?

The gaps are large between the stated importance of business technology (BT), actual involvement in enterprise business technology governance (EBTG) and in having the right skills, knowledge and experience within boards to effectively use information and govern enterprise business technology (EBT). These gaps are being questioned by industry commentators (Davis, 2012;Feather, 2012;Groysberg and Bell, 2012), and some academics call for further research to address the gaps (for example, Huff et al, 2006;Andriole, 2009). Therefore, our objective is to help boards understand the future focus of EBTG and their role in this governance process, to identify the barriers to effectiveness in this area and understand the increasing risks.

Clearly, directors in recent high-profile corporate failures did not understand the connection between their accountabilities as governors and the flagrant abuse and manipulation of data and information for illegal and unethical purposes (Marchand, 2012). Others suggest that IT immaturity underlies a board's orientation to the strategic use of data and information (Marchand and Hykes, 2006), which perhaps explains the dearth of board-room appropriate, BT-related competencies and experience within boards. These information management practices and information use for decision making (Marchand, 2005).

The justification of why we should care about this topic:

Prior research on information systems leadership has emphasised the importance of the BODs in developing ITG (Andriole 2009;Huff et al. 2006); but has mostly limited itself to examining how specific board characteristics influence the level of IT investment or the creation of a Chief Information Officer's (CIO) position in the organisation. For example, boards with more IT experienced external board members, and younger committees are associated with more substantial IT investments and the presence and role of a CIO (Kambil & Lucas, 2002;Karake, 1995).

On the other hand, Boards' IT governance mechanisms enhance the ability of the board to acquire, interpret, and disseminate information, thus, improving the strength of the board to govern IT. However, boards' IT governance from past studies claim that boards may experience drawbacks in their IT governance responsibilities due to a deficit of IT knowledge (Bart & Turel, 2010;Huff et al., 2006). However, Perez-Arostegui et al. (2012) emphasise the definition of IT as a competence that consists of IT setup, IT technical and administrative knowledge, and the combination of IT with firm strategy.