IT Service Management: A Cross-national Study of ITIL Adoption

Abstract

IT Service Management (ITSM) is transforming the management of the IT function on a global scale with major changes in work practices. The intent of this study is to empirically explore how IT service management is adopted in today's global economy. The article examines the adoption of ITSM processes as defined in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL ® ). The adoption of operational processes is compared to that of tactical/strategic level processes and the contribution of country, size, and industry sector to variation in adoption of ITIL processes is assessed. Institutional theory is used as a foundation for the study. The analysis is based on 623 responses to three surveys conducted in the UK, USA, DACH (German-speaking countries) and Australia.The study found organisations adopting ITIL implemented more operational level processes than the tactical/strategic level processes. DACH countries exhibit higher ITIL process adoption than the UK, USA, and Australia. Adoption varied on industry sector, and, in part, on organisation size. Based on a discussion of theory and practice, the article derives insights for academics and industry when introducing ITSM in the IT function. 866Volume 34Article 49 RQ1: Are operational level ITIL processes more widely adopted compared to tactical/strategic level ITIL processes?Much of the Information Systems (IS) research to date fails to consider variation across industry sectors [Chiasson and Davidson, 2005] and is biased towards large corporations, ignoring issues relating to small organisations [Attewell and Rule, 1991]. We need to better understand how ITIL is adopted globally across various industry sectors and in small as well as large organisations. We recognise the importance of the role played by IT in value creation especially in information-intensive industry sectors such as finance and education, leading to the second research question: RQ2: Do factors such as country, size, and industry sector contribute to variation in adoption of ITIL processes?Volume 34Article 49 867 The study uses data from 623 questionnaire responses collected from three surveys. The first survey included respondents from the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK). The second survey attracted responses from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In Europe these three countries are commonly referred to as DACH, an acronym representing countries that predominantly use the German language. The term DACH is based on the official automobile license plate abbreviations for Germany (D for Deutschland), Austria (A for Austria), and Switzerland (CH for Confoederatio Helvetica). The third survey was conducted in Australia.In the next section, we introduce institutional theory as a suitable theoretical framework for the study, present a review of relevant literature, and provide a brief introduction to ITIL. Based on theory and research, we articulate a model, including a set of hypotheses. Following this we describe the methodology and present and discuss the results. We conclude with impli...

ITIL in small to medium‐sized enterprises software companies: towards an implementation sequence

“…Our study shows that the incident management process is the first ITIL process to be implemented by software SMEs. This is a finding that is aligned with Marrone et al [11], who note that incident management is adopted by 95% of organizations using ITIL. However, the authors believe that the reasons for choosing this process are rooted in the fact that this process shows results more quickly than other processes related to the ITIL life cycle, especially from the customer's perspective, through increased user satisfaction.…”

“…Finally, the design of the study is seen as a limitation; in the case of this paper, subjects select ITIL processes without taking into account the previous implemented processes. According to Marrone et al , the first process selected influences the cohort of processes adopted subsequently, so this is an important limitation in terms of research design.…”

“…Regarding implementation order issues, the ITIL V.3 framework does not prescribe what processes/activities should be implemented or their implementation order. Moreover, according to Marrone et al [11], the fact is that most organizations commence their ITIL adoption with the incident management process. Incident management is strongly linked to other operational processes (i.e., change management and configuration management), and according to Marrone et al [11], the first process selected influences the cohort of processes adopted after that.…”

“…Moreover, according to Marrone et al [11], the fact is that most organizations commence their ITIL adoption with the incident management process. Incident management is strongly linked to other operational processes (i.e., change management and configuration management), and according to Marrone et al [11], the first process selected influences the cohort of processes adopted after that. The process sequencing problem in ITIL is not new in the literature, for example, [32].…”

Strategising IT service management through ITIL implementation: model and empirical test

“…Interestingly, IT professionals are collaborating in this endeavour through the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), a global non-profit community. Research reports that IT executives worldwide consider ITIL to be a suitable organisational infrastructure for IT services (de Espindola, Luciano, & Audy, 2009;Marrone, Gacenga, Cater-Steel, & Kolbe, 2014;Zajac & Soja, 2012).…”