IT Governance Framework Applied to SMEs

Theoretical And Empirical Background

In the literature, corporate governance (CG) is generally conceptualized with reference to the rights and responsibilities of different stakeholders in the firm, to the relationships among stakeholders with regards to the decision-making process, resolution of possible conflicts, and control of organizational resources, and to the means for setting corporate objectives and monitoring performance (Turlea et al., 2010). The OECD has proposed the following definition of CG which seems to have gained widespread popularity (Mason & O'Mahony, 2008): “a set of relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders [that] provides the structure through which the objectives of the company are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance are determined” (p. 32).