IT and the Board of Directors: An Empirical Investigation into the “Governance Questions” Canadian Board Members Ask about IT

ABSTRACT: In modern organizations, information technologies (IT) often help drive organizational strategies. As such, IT require both judicious planning and oversight. While executive oversight over IT is quite common nowadays, several studies indicate that due to the many benefits and risks associated with IT, more/better board-level oversight may be in order. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of research on the involvement of board members in IT governance. We attempt to partially fill this gap by empirically examining the degree to which the 27 IT governance questions that make up an IT board governance framework recommended by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants are raised by the board members of 94 Canadian firms. We also investigate the extent to which the questions are considered important. Our findings show that: board members use only some of the IT governance questions and not all the recommended ones; there is a gap between the IT governance questions board members ask and the ones they perceive to be important; and the number and importance of IT governance questions that board members ask appear to vary with both their organization’s strategic use of IT and the need for IT reliability. Implications for research and practice are offered.