s that IT will be integrated with the rest of the organization and that its resources will be effectively managed so that it can be leveraged successfully for competitive advantage. Since IT is so critical to the management of enterprise resources and the conduct of business, particularly in todayÆs global environment, IT governance is essential to a companyÆs success.
Two key factors in IT governance are the balance of global integration and local responsiveness. These two factors are balanced across four IT governance approaches that respond to global and local pressures in different ways: centralized, federated, parent-led, and multi-local. Centralized businesses provide global integration but less responsiveness, while federated businesses must provide both global integration and local responsiveness. Parent-led businesses have medium to low pressures for both integration and responsiveness, while multi-local businesses are strongly pressured to provide local responsiveness. These categories may overlap in a particular company but most companies will predominantly fall into one of the four categories (Rowsell-Jones & McDonald 2005).
3. Loose, close, and tight relationships define the level of integration in information systems in terms of the number of relationships involved. Loose integration is characterized by many relationships. It implies basic co
...