IT governance is important to the success of most business enterprises. One form of IT governance is the use of board-level IT committees. This study examines committee charters, which are the basic foundation for an effective committee. Based on prior literature and theory, we develop a framework and six propositions for assessing IT committee charter components including committee characteristics, member characteristics, and roles and responsibilities. We test the propositions by exploring the IT committee charters and information from other sources for 23 Fortune 500 companies. We find that most IT committees have more members and meet more often than required by the charter. All but one committee has at least one member with IT expertise as defined in our study. Also, most roles and responsibilities are focused on the five IT governance focus areas prescribed by the Information Technology Governance Institute. However, the roles are not consistently specified in all charters. Suggestions for future research and guidelines for practice are provided.
Use of e-courses in higher education has become increasingly widespread in recent years. Educators continue to debate the effectiveness of the technology and some argue that e-courses may be appropriate for some courses, but not for others. Each discipline must determine the effectiveness of e-courses consistent with its own priorities. Within accounting education, no consensus has been reached. Recently, an opportunity to compare student performance in an e-course setting with that in a traditional classroom setting presented itself. A professor taught the introductory accounting course in the two settings; classes were conducted in such a way that student performance could be compared. This paper describes results and conclusions drawn from the comparisons.
Cybersecurity is a serious and growing risk for organizations. Firms with board of director involvement in information technology governance (ITG) may be better equipped to deal with this risk. Yet little is known about the audit committee's role in ITG. This study uses efficiency and institutional theories to investigate the influence of security breaches and boardlevel technology committees on disclosing ITG roles in the audit committee charter. We develop hypotheses and test them using a sample of 189 firms. Results show that firms with a technology committee and a data breach are more likely to disclose ITG roles in the audit committee charter. This suggests that firms experiencing a data breach realize their vulnerability and by already having oversight at the board level, it is more natural for them to increase oversight by assigning ITG roles to the audit committee. We provide implications and areas for future research.
Use of the Internet continues to increase, and new technology continues to provide more and better communication options. As more and more students choose to enroll in Internet courses (e-courses), technological advances offer various ways to control academic dishonesty. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to chairpersons of accounting departments to obtain their views about the use of several technological enhancements that could serve as controls in e-courses. Such controls would require that some of these newer physical enhancements be on students’ computers when they register for an e-course. Respondents strongly favored requiring students to provide a digital photo ID and audio capabilities when registering for an e-course. Other potential controls were not supported. Those surveyed also tended to believe that students should use a web cam when completing examinations on-line and that faculty should compare the photo ID with the web cam image. In other settings, they felt that such a comparison was unnecessary. Overall, the accounting department heads surveyed endorsed requiring the student who enrolls in an e-course to obtain some existing technology, and they expect the student to be prepared to spend more than $100 to obtain the technology.
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