Board-level IT governance and organizational performance

Research on the strategic management of Information Technology (IT) resources has mostly focused on the oversight provided by the management team as a means to increase organizational performance. In recent years, boards of directors have also increased their involvement in IT matters, and various theoretical lenses suggest that this oversight too has the potential to influence organizational performance. Hence, this study synthesizes the resource-based and contingency views of MIS with corporate governance theories, and examines key antecedents and consequences of board-level IT governance (ITG) using a multi-method approach. Structural Equation Modelling analysis applied to organization-level data collected from 171 board members suggested that the level of ITG exercised by boards was contingent upon the organization's ‘IT use mode’, along the two dimensions of need for (a) fast and reliable IT, and (b) new innovative IT. But, the findings further suggested that the contingency approach may be suboptimal because it can cause new ways of leveraging IT to be ignored. High levels of board-level ITG, regardless of existing IT needs, increased organizational performance. This phenomenon was illuminated with applicability checks. Moreover, content analysis and structured interviews with board members further enriched these insights.