Information Technology Process Improvement Decision-Making: An Exploratory Study from the Perspective of Process Owners and Process Manager

Background

Organizational processes should be designed to achieve key goals, such as, cost/risk control, alignment of activities across the organization, and predictability (Tarr, Williams, & Halpern, 2008). Williams (2001) noted that IT governance is emerging as an integral part of enterprise governance with a goal of ensuring (a) there is IT alignment with the enterprise to maximize benefits, (b) resources are used responsibly, and (c) related risks are managed appropriately. In most organizations, no one person or area is in charge of the organization’s key processes because the organization is divided into functional pieces, or departmentalized by products (Vanhaverbeke & Torremans, 1999). IT decisions are expected to have substantial impacts on the enterprise as a whole (Ranganathan & Sethi, 2002). This drives IT decision-making processes to involve a consideration of a wide range of technical and organizational issues (Sabherwal & King, 1992).