IT governance from the operational perspective – a study of IT governance strategies applied within maintenance management

This paper investigates the existence and effects of different IT governance strategies on the operative level of manufacturing industries. The study is based on a mixed research method including statistical analysis of questionnaire data and a qualitative analysis of interview material. The operational business unit that is being studied is maintenance and its management. Several types of IT governance strategies existed within this business unit according to the study, and the decentralised was the most common. The different strategies had both a positive and negative impact on the business unit, but the federal IT governance strategy seems to overcome some of the problems in the others. The results indicate that there might be other characteristics worth testing than the ones used in this study, for instance the size of the business unit.