Governance of information technology: an overview of the adoption of best practice models by Brazilian user companies

Abstract

The objective of the research project whose results are reported in this paper was to help the researchers to better understand the adoption of IT governance best practice models among Brazilian organizations that make use of IT in their daily activities, based on the perceptions of IT executives. An electronic survey was used in this exploratory-descriptive study; it was sent to executives from 100 companies that are heavy users of IT. The results concern a sample of 51 companies that agreed to take part in the survey and show that these tend to associate adopting IT best practices with an enhancement of the visibility, as seen by executives, of returns on investment and with an increase of the control and quality of the services provided by the IT function. The interviewees also felt that the determinants for the adoption of IT governance of best practices are a rising demand for organizational control and monitoring; shareholders' pressure for transparency; growing technological complexity; and the fact that business areas are becoming increasingly dependent on IT. The IT governance best practices models identified as the most frequently used ones were ITIL, Cobit, PMBok and the codes for information safety management BS 7799, ISO/IEC 17799 and ISO/ IEC 27001. Results also show that the concept of IT governance is strongly associated with initiatives to increase the control and quality of the IT services provided to the organization.