Cooperation Benefits in the Establishment of Voluntary Inter-organizational IT Governance for Healthcare and Social Welfare IT -- A Case Study

Abstract

This study investigates the establishment of voluntary inter-organizational IT governance between healthcare and social welfare organizations. Special attention is placed on the role of perceived IT cooperation benefits, a novel factor introduced in this research. First, IT governance research, the resource based view (RBV), transaction cost economics (TCE) and social psychology theories are discussed as the theoretical background of perceived IT cooperation benefits. In the case benefits were operationalized to concrete level statements and evaluated with an expert survey. Survey results and the statements were eventually used to justify a proposed IT governance arrangement engaging over 100 organizations. Empirical results revealed that the perceived IT cooperation benefits had a decisive role both in the commitment to prepare the proposal and in the acceptance and implementation of the proposal. Positive expectations regarding IT cooperation benefits were able to outweigh the negative trust issues which had resulted partly from previous failures to establish comparable arrangements. In the survey operationalized IT cooperation benefits were evaluated to be highly significant for the proposed arrangement. Variations in evaluations were unrelated to demographic, situational or behavioral variables.

Delving Into the IT Governance-Management Communication Interface

“…Stakeholders' understanding and engagement ( 14) (Buchwald et al, 2014;Coertze & Von Solms, 2015;De Maere & De Haes, 2017;Gómez et al, 2017;Juiz, 2011;Juiz et al, 2017;Ko & Fink, 2010;Kuruzovich et al, 2012;Luftman, 2000;Peterson, 2004;Rau, 2004;Saetang & Haider, 2012;Salle & Di-Vitantonio, 2006;Schlosser et al, 2015) Negotiation ( 5) (Gewald & Helbig, 2006; Y. J. Kim et al, 2013;Medeiros et al, 2017;Peterson, 2004;Weill & Ross, 2004) Participation ( 10) (Dahlberg, 2015;Ionita, 2009 • List of frameworks. Mainly, regarding the papers included in this work, researchers used the following frameworks in their studies: COBIT 3, COBIT 4, COBIT 5, ISO/IEC 38500, COSO, and the recommendations of the Third King Report on Governance for South Africa.…”

“…Collaboration (8) (Bradley et al, 2012;De Maere & De Haes, 2016;Harguem et al, 2014;Kearns & Lederer, 2003;Peterson, 2004;Prasad et al, 2009Prasad et al, , 2010Schlosser et al, 2015) Shared learning (10) (Bin-Abbas & Bakry, 2014;De Maere & De Haes, 2016, 2017Luftman, 2000;Rau, 2004;Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999;Schlosser et al, 2015;Sledgianowski & Luftman, 2005;Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2009;Van Grembergen et al, 2004) Partnership (4) (Dahlberg, 2015;De Maere & De Haes, 2016;Harguem et al, 2014;Sledgianowski & Luftman, 2005) Information quality exchange (1) (Kuruzovich et al, 2012) • Shared learning. Regarding group learning, they showed an integrating process that develops shared understanding among individuals and takes coordinated actions through mutual adjustment, including group dynamics, trust, internal commitment, and shared vision.…”