The Influence of IT Governance on Service Processes in Multi-Business Manufacturing Enterprises: Performance Impacts from Structures, Processes, and Relational Mechanisms

In the last 30 years, developing industrial services has emerged as a strategic imperative for most manufacturing firms. However, they struggle with the implementation of appropriate IT solutions. Being widely accepted as a strategic concept in the IT domain, IT governance (ITG) ensures effectiveness and efficiency in the usage of IT in multi-business firms. This paper aims to investigate the service performance impact of ITG. Doing so, the study takes the resource-based perspective, and integrates the economic theory of complementarities and the concept of relatedness. The proposed increase in service process performance is grounded in the generation of sustainable competitive advantage. The framework is investigated by using eight exploratory case studies in multi-business manufacturing organizations. The results suggest that ITG is positively related to service process performance through the mediators of IT relatedness and service process relatedness. Furthermore, ITG levers have been identified which might significantly increase service process performance.