Organizational learning in the context of IT governance

Subtitle:an exploration of the theory-practice gap

“Why is it that, despite the large amount of studies on IT governance, many professionals still fail to put these theories into practice?” Nowadays, Information Technology (IT) has become crucial in the support, sustainability and growth of many contemporary organization. In addition, a growing number of these organizations is going through a Digital Transformation which requires them to invest in developing skills which are necessary to implement and exploit new technologies. This includes the skills required to realize highly efficient and effective IT governance. The goal of IT governance is to establish appropriate control over an organization’s current and future use of IT. As such, it requires the implementation of practices which enable the creation of IT business value and appropriate management of IT related business risks. Unfortunately, many organizations still experience difficulties in their journey to implement IT governance. Therefore, disparities exist between the normative best practices related to IT governance and the actual state of practice in organizations. In the academic literature, this problem is known as the theory-practice gap. While organizational learning has been widely suggested as an approach to reduce a theory-practice gap in general, there is a lack of research about organizational learning in the context of IT governance. In response, this study examines the theory-practice gap through the lens of organizational learning and proposes a model that can be used to analyse and resolve the problem. Lastly, we also examine how some concepts of organizational learning apply to the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). This includes the conditions which enable the CIO to create a learning organization.

Publication year:2021

Keywords:Doctoral thesis

Accessibility:Closed