International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

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International Journal of Information Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

Dependency-based IT Governance practices in inter-organisational

collaborations: A graph-driven elaboration
Novica Zarvic , Carl Stolze, Matthias Boehm, Oliver Thomas
Information Management and Information Systems Group, University of Osnabrck, Katharinenstr. 3, 49074 Osnabrck, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 26 April 2012
Keywords:
IT management
Inter-organisational Collaboration
IT Governance
Interdependencies

a b s t r a c t
In an ever more globalised world IT (Information Technology) managers increasingly have to support
value creation within inter-organisational collaboration settings. Such organisational forms with their
inherent complexity require specic approaches for their IT management within. Especially important
for unleashing the chances of networked arrangements is the right form of IT Governance. Choosing
the right arrangement for IT Governance is heavily dependent on understanding the concepts on which
such business constellations are built. In this paper we provide therefore rst a systematically derived,
graph-based perspective on the key terms of inter-organisational collaboration. Based on this understanding of concepts and structured representations of inter-organisational dependencies we present
interorganisational governance practices for IT. Specically, we assign accountabilities to top executive
roles from both IT and business. By keeping a holistic perspective, the insights gained in this study are
highly relevant for strategic information management in terms of Business-IT Alignment as well as monitoring and controlling of inter-organisational information infrastructures in a rapidly changing business
environment.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Inter-organisational collaboration and the underlying IT (Information Technology) is the foundation that enabled todays
globalised way of doing business. Practices required in managing
collaborative organisational forms differ from those used in single enterprises. Therefore research on collaboration that crosses
organisational boundaries has the aim to advance theory and practice that is needed to deal with collaborative organisational forms
(Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2005). Managerial practices
presuppose a deep understanding of the involved concepts, which
are in the case of inter-organisational collaborations often built on
structural congurations and spatial boundaries.
Throughout a single enterprise, departments and individuals
are dependent on each other at various levels. For instance, in
order to full follow-up activities inside an intra-organisational
business process, we might depend on an outcome provided by a
colleague (Thompson, 1962). In doing so, we can also be dependent on the support that IT is supposed to provide us. IT itself
must be well aligned with the business processes and the business strategy of the company (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993),

Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 541 969 4812; fax: +49 541 969 4840.

E-mail addresses: novica.zarvic@uni-osnabrueck.de (N. Zarvic),

carl.stolze@uni-osnabrueck.de (C. Stolze), matthias.boehm@uni-osnabrueck.de
(M. Boehm), oliver.thomas@uni-osnabrueck.de (O. Thomas).
0268-4012/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2012.03.004

which results in new interdependencies that may again inuence

the overall outcome. The most apparent characteristic of any collaborative form crossing organisational boundaries is that two or
more independent companies are working together towards a common goal, which could not be achieved by one company on its
own (Gordijin & Akkermans, 2003). Consequently those companies become interdependent on each other. Hence, we are dealing,
additionally and next to intra-organisational relationships, with
inter-organisational relationships (IORs) business arrangements
that cross the boundaries of individual enterprises (Bachmann &
van Witteloostuijn, 2009) which are sometimes also summarised
under the term Collaborative Network (Camarinha-Matos, 2007).
Interdependencies are a very important aspect of collaboration
(Kanter, 1994) and omnipresent in our working life. To assure
the success of the joint business endeavour those interdependencies need to be managed and coordinated (Malone & Crowston,
1994). As a consequence the challenge of managing and coordinating inter-organisational collaborations (Chi & Holsapple, 2005) and
specically the corresponding inter-organisational dependencies
(IODs) is complicated, because we are dealing with dependencies
that comprise different individual enterprises. The trend of forming
Collaborative Networks is said to further continue (CamarinhaMatos, 2007). This claim has been conrmed in a recent study
& Thomas, 2011) so that it represents a
(Stolze, Boehm, Zarvic,
relevant research issue. Nevertheless, when talking about collaboration a sound understanding of this term is needed (Madlberger
& Roztocki, 2009).

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N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

The aim of this paper is twofold. First we aim to systematically

establish IT Governance structures in the context of IORs. Second
these governance structures can be only successfully implemented
when they are based on a common understanding of relevant collaboration concepts. These aims lead us to the denition of our two
research questions:

Inter-organisational
Dependencies (IOD)
c
a

Inter-organisational Systems (IOS)

RQ1: What are crisp meanings for the terms collaboration, cooperation and coordination and what role does interdependency play?
RQ2: In whose sphere of accountability do IODs fall; how do the alignment processes between IOD categories need to be governed, and
which relational mechanisms are needed to reach effective governance of IORs and IODs?

Org A

Org B

Org n

Inter-organisational
Relationship (IOR)
Fig. 1. Important concepts of inter-organisational collaboration.

In this paper we therefore rst aim to understand the meaning of

collaboration and related terms before we switch to collaborative IT Governance. We rst review the eld of inter-organisational
collaboration, identify relevant concepts, and shortly sketch the
interrelated elds of IT Governance and Business-IT Alignment.
In Section 3 we describe the applied research methodology, containing our research questions and associated research activities.
For tackling the two research questions mentioned above, distinct
design activities are needed. The rst design activity is presented
in Section 4 and is devoted to terminological issues where we
develop crisp denitions of relevant terms by applying a novel
method. In our second design activity we are building on these
results and discuss in Section 5 structural congurations where
we systematically deal with the issue of collaborative IT governance. We develop appropriate accountability structures and
identify corresponding relational mechanisms. Section 6 provides
an argumentative-descriptive evaluation, before we nally conclude the paper and state future research directions in Section 7.

2. Background information
2.1. Collaboration in an inter-organisational context
Inter-organisational collaboration (Chi & Holsapple, 2005)
requires the presence of IORs, which are usually supported by
means of inter-organisational systems (IOS). Barret and Konsynski
(1982) initially used the term Inter-Organisation Information Sharing System, before this class of IS (Information Systems) was later
called simply IOS as we do nowadays (Cash & Konsynski, 1985).
Johnston and Vitale (1988) dene an IOS to be built around
information technology, i.e. around computer and communications
technology that facilitates the creation, storage, transformation,
and transmission of information. An IOS differs from an internal,
distributed information system by allowing information to be sent
across organisational boundaries. Since then the topic of IOS has
heavily been investigated. Hong provided for instance a framework for IOS, which was based on what he calls the value activity
linkage (Hong, 2002). Hongs IOS framework uses the concepts
of horizontal and vertical linkages and argues that IOS are also
often linked to rms in other value chains. Another IOS classication is given by Kumar and van Dissel (1996), who provide
a typology of IOS consisting of three types of interdependency.
Their IOS typology is based on the pivotal work by Thompson
(1962), who initially researched interdependencies in an intraorganisational context and distinguished pooled, sequential and
reciprocal interdependency. Kumar and van Dissel observed the
impact and applicability of Thompsons internal interdependencies
for the inter-organisational collaboration context. However, when
talking about IOS, we are talking about arrangements mainly at
IT level. Such IT arrangements enable and support IORs and this

relationship should therefore be allocated to the research eld of

Business-IT Alignment.
Much literature exists on IORs and many different forms have
been introduced during the last three decades. For instance, Oliver
considers in her work the IORs of trade associations, voluntary
agency federations, joint ventures, joint programs, corporatenancial interlocks and agency-sponsor linkages (Oliver, 1990).
Barringer and Harrison discuss ten years later newer forms such
as networks, consortia, alliances, trade associations and interlock directorates (Barringer & Harrison, 2000). Other types of
IORs found in the literature are virtual corporations (Davidow &
Malone, 1992), virtual enterprises and organisations (CamarinhaMatos & Afsarmanesh, 2006), digital business ecosystems (Corallo,
Passiante, & Prencipe, 2007), b-webs (Tapscott, Ticoll, & Lowy,
2000), or value webs (Gordijin & Akkermans, 2003).
What the above described concepts have in common is the existence of multiple interrelated entities without neither an IOS nor an
IOR would exist. This fact leads us to the nal concept that is important to the inter-organisational collaboration context, namely to the
concept of IODs. The term dependency refers to the state of relying on someone or something and with interdependency a mutual
dependence is meant (Rinaldi, Peerenboom, & Kelly, 2001). As far
as such states build a major characteristic inside and between the
concepts of an IOS and/or IOR, IODs deserve special attention. Fig. 1
depicts exemplary the inter-organisational collaboration concepts
described above. It shows an IOR in the form of a supply chain consisting of three collaborating organisations with an IOS in place.
IODs are displayed at organisational level.
2.2. On IT-Governance
Business-IT Alignment and IT Governance can be understood as
complementary and deeply related concepts (Tiwana & Konsynski,
2010; Weill & Ross, 2004). Therefore we rst present in the following a short overview on Business-IT Alignment before switching
to IT Governance. Business-IT Alignment refers to the continuous
and dynamic process of assuring a t between business needs and
IT (Tiwana & Konsynski, 2010). For over two decades the on-going
transformation of business processes through IT-enabled collaboration and coordination makes Business-IT Alignment one of the
top concerns for IT practitioners as well as academia (Chan & Reich,
2007) and represents therefore a very relevant IS research issue,
which is also of signicant relevance for the inter-organisational
collaboration context.
The rst approaches for what is called Business-IT Alignment today were using diverse structured Information Systems
planning methodologies (Lederer & Mendelow, 1989) such as
Strategic Data-Planning (Martin, 1982), Business Systems Planning
by IBM (Zachman, 1982) or Information Engineering (Finkelstein,

N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

Community

Interdisciplinary
research elds
like Informaon
Systems,
Systems Engineering, etc.

Solving praccal problems with IT artefacts

Goal 1

Denion
graphs

Organisaonal
form
Goal 2

Collaborave
Networks like
Virtual
Organisaons,
Value Webs,
Supply Chains,
etc.

Governance
structures

Problem 1:
Construct denion graphs
for gaining crisp understanding of collaboraon
related terms

543

Knowledge base

Answering knowledge proMutual blems by studying the world

nesng

Acvies:
Apply axiomac
theory of fuzzy sets
Apply theory of
denion graphs

Problem 2:
Establish systemac IT Governance pracces based on
results to problem 1
Acvies:
Graph-driven
clustering of accountability steering boards
Denion of relaonal
mechanisms

Need to know/learn about:

IT Governance, Collaborave Networks, IORs,

IOS, and IODs
Axiomac theory of fuzzy
sets
Theory of knowledge/
denion graphs
Exisng denions

Use

Add

Need to know/learn about:

Governance pracces
Dependency categorisaon approaches
Basic structural properes
from graph theory
Relaonal governance
mechanisms

Exisng
theories,
scienc
literature, best
pracces,
encyclopedia,
expert
knowledge,
surveys, etc.

Use

Add

Fig. 2. Research steps in the rened IS design science research framework by Wieringa (2010).

1989; Martin, 1989). Those methodologies followed a top-down

approach, neglected legacy systems and focused on single compa Daneva, & Wieringa, 2007). The notion of alignment
nies (Zarvic,
itself was introduced and shaped slightly afterwards by Henderson
and Venkatraman (1993). They describe alignment from a strategic point of view in a descriptive nature of what has to be done
(Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993), whereas operational alignment
is more concerned with how to do things (Chan & Reich, 2007;
Wieringa, 2008). Another cornerstone in this context is represented
by Enterprise Architecture Frameworks (EAFs), like the Zachman
Framework (Sowa & Zachman, 1992; Zachman, 1987), GRAAL (van
Eck, Blanken, & Wieringa, 2004) and others. These EAFs are often
structured in layers and have the aim to organise company-wide
knowledge and thus make complexity more manageable. They
allow as opposed to Information Systems planning methodologies
for top-down, bottom-up, and out-of-the middle perspectives on
Business-IT Alignment.
Since the late 1990s the concept of IT Governance emerged as
the distinct conceptualisation of steering the use of IT within a
company (van Grembergen, 2010). Most authors share a common
understanding that IT Governance is about controlling the strategic impact of IT and its value delivery to the business (Simonsson
& Johnson, 2006; Stolze, Boehm, et al., 2011). Weill and Ross
(2004) dene IT Governance as specifying the decision rights
and accountability framework to encourage desirable behaviour
in using IT. Becker, Pppelbu, Stolze, and Cyrus (2009) also state
that it is desirable that behaviour is aligned with general targets,
strategy, values and norms of an enterprise, which is in line with
the general goal of Business-IT Alignment. The scope of IT Governance should not be the single decisions themselves but the general
determination which decisions have to be made, who should contribute to the decision-making processes and who is eventually
eligible to make decisions. The view by Weill and Ross (2004) that
IT Governance relates to the leadership of the use of IT is generally
also in line with the view of other distinguished representatives
in this domain such as van Grembergen (2010), Luftman (2005),
or the IT Governance Institute (2010). Summing up, we regard
IT Governance as the denition of structures and procedures of
decision making, and the allocation of decision rights to people

and organisational entities. Such decision-making structures can

semi-formally be described by means of basic graph-theoretical
properties of which we will make use in the following.
3. Research methodology
Based on the background information provided so far, we identied some interrelated gaps, which are represented by our two
research questions. Both represent current problems discussed in
recent literature justifying the provision of solutions that require
distinct research activities. The solutions in this paper are presented
by means of artefacts that have been created in a detailed and
methodologically sound research approach. In the IS research eld
the creation of artefacts is usually associated with Design Science
Research (Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004). We have taken the socalled Rened IS Design Science Research Framework by Wieringa
(2010), which actually represents an extension of the framework
by Hevner et al. (2004), and instantiated it with the identied
needs and problems together with the associated activities that
are needed to be able to provide adequate solutions. Fig. 2 depicts
our instantiation and provides a holistic picture of the undertaken
research endeavour. According to Wieringa (2009) problems can
be divided into practical problems and knowledge problems. A
practical problem requires a solution in form of an artefact and
therefore presupposes a change in the world. A knowledge problem on the other hand is characterised by knowledge deciency
about the world under consideration. By studying the world such
knowledge gaps can be closed. Note that practical problems and
knowledge problems are highly complementary and therefore
not mutually exclusive (Holmstrm, Ketokivi, & Hameri, 2009).
This explains the mutual nesting shown in Fig. 2.
Our rst problem represented by RQ1 is of terminological
nature and justied by the claim of Madlberger and Roztocki (2009)
that there is no common and systematic understanding of collaboration. Further, it seems there is a tension to use the terms
collaboration (e.g. Kumar & van Dissel, 1996) and cooperation (e.g.
Ring & van de Ven, 1992) interchangeably in the literature. It was
also observed that the term coordination (e.g. Weigand, van der
Poll, & de Moor, 2003) is also often used in this context. These are

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N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

terms that can be found in many disciplines that are relevant for
inter-organisational collaboration so that a clear distinction leading to a shared understanding is needed and represents a goal
that comes from the community itself. The solution for this problem is represented by several denition graphs for each of the
investigated terms, which are built on a thorough analysis of the
involved concepts. This implies of course the usage and application
of existing knowledge. By including a focus on interdependencies, we apply a graph-theoretically founded approach for creating
the described artefacts. The second problem represented by RQ2
is of structural nature and concerned with the establishment
of IT Governance structures for IORs, which represents a current
research issue (Croteau & Bergeron, 2009). Here we aim to design
IT governance practices for an inter-organisational collaboration
context, i.e. to dene decision making structures as well as allocating accountability to top executive roles on the basis of concepts
identied during the creation of the solution for RQ1. We will give
special focus to the concept of interdependencies, because these
were identied to represent a very important aspect of collaboration (Kanter, 1994). The allocation of decision making structures
and accountabilities is again following a graph-driven perspective.
We have opted to provide solutions for both interrelated problems from a graph theoretical point of view rather than to base
our work on more traditional empirical methods for the following
reasons. Graph theory represents an important reference disciplines with respect to Collaborative Networks (Camarinha-Matos
& Afsarmanesh, 2005). Further, the collaboration concept includes
from its very nature at least two entities that stand in relation to
each other. Thoben and Jagdev (2001) have for instance depicted
such constellations by means of edges and nodes and represented
them as graphs. With regard to a model-like representation of the
terminological composition (RQ1) as well as the structural composition (RQ2), we have chosen basic concepts from graph theory.
These concepts provide accurate and systematic means of representing dependencies and interdependencies between entities
whilst allowing easy comprehension through graphical representation.

4. On the notions of collaboration, cooperation and

coordination
4.1. Towards crisp denitions
Each research eld requires a scientic foundation, which is necessary for the reciprocal understanding of researchers that aim to
communicate and nally exchange scientic insights gained. However, this is not always an easy task, because for certain terms a
myriad of denitions exists. To make matters worse many concepts are dened in a fuzzy way, which can in turn lead in the
worst case to completely fuzzy results. Even renowned scientists
do contribute to such fuzziness when they change terms in time. A
prominent example is provided by the already mentioned Zachman
Framework, which was initially called a Framework for Information Systems Architecture (Zachman, 1987) and was later referred
to by the same author as a Framework for Enterprise Architecture.
This of course can lead to some confusion, especially among young
and less experienced researchers, who did not follow the complete
evolution of this framework.
The natural sciences rely on the fact that researchers must dene
their concepts in a precise, crisp way, so that they can use the same
denition throughout their work. Nevertheless, terms and words
are often used interchangeably. Working with non-identical concepts and denitions may lead to following fact: Researcher A uses
term Z and has a different understanding of it than researcher B
from the same eld, because they are working with non-identical

denitions and concepts. Concepts are called fuzzy concepts (Hoede

& Wang, 2006), if elements occurring in some denitions do not
occur in all denitions. However, not only the natural sciences, but
especially multidisciplinary research elds suffer from such inconsistencies. The problem is even worse in multidisciplinary elds,
as far as the researchers do not stem from the same eld but from
diverse elds. No matter whether we call the collaborative organisational forms Collaborative Networks or not, we need to have a
precise understanding of the term collaboration, as far as it represents a constituent part of the composed expression. Admittedly
there seems to exist no common and systematic understanding of
collaboration (Madlberger & Roztocki, 2009). In order to achieve a
precise and integrative understanding, we have followed a graphbased approach to move towards precise denitions, which provide
a shared understanding between researchers in both the Information Systems eld as well as in other related scientic elds. We
thereby look at the terms collaboration and cooperation, which are
often used interchangeably. Casually the term coordination is also
mentioned in connection with them. However, each of these terms
is different and has its strengths and limitations. The biggest problem is that terms are used seldom in a precise way. Further, special
attention is given to the concept of interdependency in this context.
In the following we apply a novel graph-theoretical approach
introduced by Hoede and Wang (2006). Thereby S denotes the set
of elements that occur in a given set D of denitions. The concept of
fuzzy set was initially introduced by Zadeh (1965), who brought in
the generalisation to let the membership functional (x), x an element, take values in [0, 1]. This means that elements not belonging
to the set have value 0 and elements belonging to it have value 1. If
 has only values 0 and 1, we dene it to be a crisp set. Otherwise
we call the set fuzzy. Now we want to stress that if the number of
occurrences of an element of S is present in some denition in set
D, this leads to a natural membership functional. If an element e
occurs n times, given |D| = N denitions, then it can be said to have
membership value (e) = n/N. Elements of S are concepts that occur
in the denitions in D with the pairs of concepts that are in the definitions in some way related (cf. Grigoras, Halverscheid, & Hoede,
2007). Hoede and Wang (2006) created on this basis so-called definition graphs (sometimes also referred to as knowledge graphs)
for representing denitions by viewing the concepts as nodes of a
graph and pairs of concepts as edges.
Then a straightforward procedure was applied. Nouns, which
have been the occurring concepts, have been investigated on synonymy. In case a noun appears in the form of an adjective, like for
instance harmonious adjustment, a pair <harmony, adjustment>
is extracted. Additionally, pairs are considered linked whenever a
verb or a preposition in the denition does so. Our analysis is based
on a set of 5 randomly chosen denitions for each term in order
to make the terms comparable. Note that it did not occur that two
denitions were the same, so that the three terms under consideration are indeed fuzzy concepts. Further, no concept occurred more
than 4 times in a set of 5 denitions, which explains the highest
membership value of 0.8, because one occurrence equals membership value 0.2. Table 1 shows the results and is actually a frequency
table, which allows rst conclusions about the interpretation that
different people could give to these three fuzzy concepts.
4.2. Denition graphs
After having determined the relevant concepts in the denitions
of the terms cooperation, collaboration and coordination as well
as having analysed the frequency of their occurrences by means
of the membership values, we create denition graphs to extract
all-embracing meanings or core denitions and discuss possibly occurring concepts, consequently meanings for each term. For
doing so, we take each noun from Table 1 as a node and pairs

N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

commonness

component

togetherness

joint

545

activity
intergoal
dependency
accomplishment
organisation
effort
harmony
work

transaction
action

benefit

work

association
arrangement
business

person

joint
intellect
commonness

exchange
cooperation

effort

adjustment

combination

goal

enemy
a. Cooperation graph

integration

b. Collaboration graph

function

c. Coordination graph

Fig. 3. Denition graphs for the three investigated terms.

between nouns as edges. We draw multiple edges, if a pair of concepts occurred more than once. Note that multiple edges make up
the core denition of a term, which we highlighted in the respective
graphs in Fig. 3.
The denition graph for the term cooperation is represented in
Fig. 3a. The multiple edges that make up the core denition lead
in this case to the denition that cooperation is a joint action for a
common benet. Note that we have included in this graph also concepts with one occurrence (membership value 0.2) in order be able
to consider the whole range of possible meanings (e.g. associations
between businesses or persons aiming to gain benet).
Next, Fig. 3b represents the denition graph for the term collaboration. Note that the concept cooperation is contained in some of
the denitions of collaboration, which indicates that the two terms
are much related and that collaboration is a genus of cooperation.
This provides one possible explanation for the often synonymous
use of these two terms. From the graph in Fig. 3b, we create following core denition: collaboration is a joint work with a common goal.
This denition is not very different from the cooperation denition provided above, but there are some delicate differences, when
considering concepts with lower membership value. Thereby the
most evident concept appearing in the graph is enemy, which is
somehow misleading and gives the term collaboration a negative
meaning. However, another concept appearing in the graph for collaboration and not for cooperation is intellect, which indicates that
some people associate collaboration with intellectual know-how.
Coordination is the last term considered in our analysis. As a
result it shows that the meaning of coordination evidently differs
Table 1
Membership values.


Cooperation

Collaboration

Coordination

0.8

Work
Joint

0.6

Action
Joint
Benet

Interdependency

0.4

Commonness
Person

Commonness
Goal
Cooperation

Harmony
Adjustment

0.2

Business
Exchange
Association
Combination

Intellect
Effort
Arrangement
Enemy
Togetherness

Activity
Organisation
Component
Transaction
Work
Effort
Accomplishment
Goal
Function
Integration

from the meanings of cooperation and coordination. Nevertheless,

the graph in Fig. 3c allows us to draw two important conclusions.
The rst one is that the core meaning of coordination can be dened
as harmonious adjustment. But we can further draw a second deduction, namely with respect to the concept interdependency. First
of all, interdependency has the highest membership value with
respect to the term coordination in Table 2, namely 0.6. This means
that it appeared in 3 out of 5 denitions. Graph-theoretically we can
also observe here a so-called star structure K1,n , here with a star K1,4 .
This means that four concepts are undoubtedly connected to this
single concept and therefore interdependency gains in importance,
which is relevant for our second research question. It is also very
similar to the concept of benet in Fig. 3a. After having identied
this, we can extend the core denition and state that coordination
can be dened as the harmonious adjustment of interdependencies.
We do not add to this core denition what kind of interdependencies are meant, as far as it is a core denition, but the four
concepts around interdependency, which are concepts with membership value 0.2 give information on this, depending on the case
or perspective.
Summing up, the concepts of cooperation and collaboration are
very similar, where the latter one represents a genus of the rst one.
The term coordination shows the biggest differences to the terms
cooperation and collaboration, as far as it represents an application
possibility based on interdependencies on the rst two terms. Our
goal was to come up with crisp denitions that are relevant for
the inter-organisational collaboration context and to gain insight
about the role that interdependency plays in them, which provides
an answer to RQ1.
5. IT Governance practices for inter-organisational
collaboration settings
5.1. Structural congurations
Inter-organisational collaboration settings require, as outlined
in the introduction and due to their particular characteristics,
specic governance practices (Croteau & Bergeron, 2009). Opposed
Table 2
Direct vs. indirect accountabilities of top executives during Business-IT Alignment
in inter-organisational collaborations.
Top executive

Direct accountability

Indirect accountability

CIO

ISA, PS

CPO

PT, PS

CEO

BO

<ISA,PT>, <PT,ISA>, <ISA,BO>, <BO,ISA>,

<BO,PS>, <PS,BO>,
<ISA,PT>, <PT,ISA>, <BO,PS>, <PS,BO>,
<BO,PT>, <PT,BO>,
<BO,PS>, <PS,BO>, <ISA,BO>, <BO,ISA>,
<BO,PT>, <PT,BO>

N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

to practices applied inside a solitary company, inter-organisational

practices have to facilitate behaviour that supports and balances
the objectives of the IORs, including the different IODs of the
participating organisations. To complicate matters even more, different persons within each organisation might be designated to
take accountability and responsibility for different to be governed
aspects (Peterson, OCallaghan, & Ribbers, 2000; Winkler, 2006).
Our nal research question therefore deals with structural
congurations of Collaborative Networks in the context of IT Governance. We are of the opinion that IT Governance practices for
inter-organisational collaboration settings should be based on
profoundly dened concepts. This does not only ensure a common, terminological understanding as provided by the denition
graphs but also builds a crisp basis for the denition of IT Governance practices. As far as we have in this paper a focus on IODs,
we aim to build on the results gained so far and specically want
to point back to the answer of our rst research question, and here
specically to the role of the concept of interdependency. In Fig. 3c
a star K1,4 is shown and it is argued that the four concepts of organisation, component, activity, and transaction are connected to the
single concept of interdependency, which is in turn indicating on
the importance of the latter concept. This means that different
organisations might be interdependent on each other; activities
might be interdependent on each other and so on.

IOD layers as nodes and the edges as alignment perspectives. From

each resulting node one directed edge goes to all other nodes in
the graph, in the same way as from each layer one arrow goes to all
other layers on the left. Thereby the edges indicate all conceivable
alignment perspectives that may exist. As a result we have for each
node three ingoing and three outgoing arrows. Graph-theoretically
this corresponds to the size of a graph that denotes the total number of edges in the graph, which is for our graph 12. Thus, we have
12 conceivable alignment perspectives.

5.3. Governance practices: composing accountability steering

boards
Assigning accountability to executive roles and the fullling
persons is one of the key elements of establishing IT Governance.
Magnusson states that IT Governance is practiced by top executives
(Magnusson, 2010). We therefore consider for the accountability
steering boards only top executives (CxOs), because IT Governance
should be an integral part of an enterprise governance and, in this
respect, a primary concern of the board of directors that is responsible for governing the enterprises (de Haes & van Grembergen,
2004). IT Governance implementations should therefore not be an
issue only within IT, but business executives should take a leading
role as well (van Grembergen, 2010).
In this paper and due to space limitations we will consider only
the roles of CEO (Chief Executive Ofcer), CPO (Chief Product Ofcer), and CIO (Chief Information Ofcer), which are all representing
objects of the set of top executives. These roles seem to widely
correspond to the IOD categories from Fig. 4, but an isomorph mapping is not possible, because our analysis showed that some of
the top executive roles are accountable for more than one category. Composing accountability steering boards implies to include
those top executives from the participating actors in a Collaborative Network, which are accountable for certain categories of IODs
and alignment perspectives respectively. Hence, an assignment of
categories including the appropriate alignment perspectives to top
executives or vice versa is needed. This assignment corresponds to
a graph clustering task. According to Schaeffer the eld of graph
clustering has grown quite popular and the number of published
proposals for clustering algorithms as well as reported applications
is high (Schaeffer, 2007). For our case, it is necessary to provide a
clustering denition that includes the fact that a certain top executive role can be accountable for one or more IOD categories. In the
following we shortly present the relevant objects of investigation,
and the assignment procedure:

5.2. Alignment in inter-organisational collaborations

IT Governance is sometimes considered to be an essential
element in Business-IT Alignment (Luftman, 2005). Performing
Business-IT Alignment in inter-organisational collaborations represents a challenging task (Wieringa, 2008). As already described
in Section 2.2, layered-architecture styled frameworks enable topdown, bottom-up and out-of-the-middle approaches to Business-IT
Alignment. A layered-architecture styled framework for performing Business-IT Alignment in inter-organisational collaborations
allowing for these three alignment approaches was presented by
Fellmann, and Thomas (2011). This framework consists of
Zarvic,
four layers where each layer represents one of four groups to categorise IODs: business and organisational (BO), product and service
(PS), processes and tasks (PT), IS and application (ISA). These four
IOD categories were dened in the course of a literature review
by mapping the respective concepts to application areas and correspond in the main to those four concepts (organisation, transaction,
activity, and component) around interdependency in the denition graph for coordination (Fig. 3c), thereby operationalising the
very denition of coordination. We view this consistency as a rst
conrmation of our solution to the rst problem. In Fig. 4a the
framework is depicted in its original layered form. As it becomes
obvious, each layer is connected to all others. Every coordination
effort on one of the IOD categories also affects dependencies in
other categories; therefore they need to be aligned. We convert this
semi-structured representation into a directed graph treating the

10

PT

>

>
<P

S,

BO

>

11

<BO, PT>

<B
O

,I
SA
>

<ISA, PS>

ISA

PS
<PS, ISA>

a. Layered-architecture style

<ISA, PT>

IS and application (ISA)

IODs

SA
,

<PS, BO>

Processes and tasks (PT)

IODs

4 5

PT
<I

12
<BO, PS>

Product and service (PS)

IODs

PS

1 2 3

BO

<PT, ISA>

Business and organizational (BO)

IODs

<PT, BO>

Alignment perspectives

T,

Alignment layers

Objects of Investigation:
Let D denote the set of all elements that represent the different
IOD categories: D = {BO, PT, PS, ISA}.
Let E denote the set of all elements that represent the different
roles of top executives: E = {CEO, CPO, CIO}.

<P

546

b. Directed graph

Fig. 4. Representing alignment perspectives between IODs in (a) layered architecture style and (b) by means of a directed graph.

N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

CEO

Table 3
Relational mechanisms for inter-organisational governance.

CPO
<PT, BO>

BO

PT

<P
S,
,P
S>
<P
T

<ISA, PT>

<PT, ISA>

<PS, BO>

<BO, PS>

PT
>

<BO, PT>
<I
SA
,B
O>

Alignment
perspective

Two-way communication

Collaboration relationship

Ex-ante
mechanism

Setting up
communication standards,
rules, schedules and plans
that are relevant for
communication aspect (cf.
Kumar & van Dissel, 1996).

Setting IOR goals (Dekker,

2004).

<B
O

, IS

A>

PS

IOR formation and

partner selection on the
basis of IODs (Zarvic et al.,
2010).

CIO

<ISA, PS>

547

ISA
<PS, ISA>

Fig. 5. Graph-based representation of accountability spheres of different top executives.

Assigning top executives roles to IOD categories:

x y accountable (x, y), where x D y E.
Assigning accountability spheres to top executives roles:
2008) for
Use a simplied RASCi chart (Santana Tapia & Zarvic,
assigning accountability spheres to top executive roles.
In Fig. 5 the assigned accountability spheres (clusters) for the
roles under consideration are shown. In reality it is of course neither always possible nor advisable to strictly narrow accountability
spheres down according to a systematic clustering procedure as
shown above, because managing an enterprise architecture implies
to have a holistic view. However, the assignments of accountability
spheres allow us to further specify this aspect, and hence complement the results stemming from the simplied RASCi chart.
We can namely distinguish between the IOD categories (nodes)
and alignment perspectives (edges) that lay completely inside an
accountability sphere, and those which are tackling the accountability spheres of a given top executive. The rst can be seen as
direct accountabilities, whereas the second can be seen as indirect
accountabilities. Direct accountabilities include the IOD categories
(including the alignment perspectives inside the sphere). Indirect
accountabilities include only alignment perspectives tackling the
sphere by ingoing and outgoing nodes, which indicates that even
the respective top executive is not directly accountable, it has as
direct neighbour to be included in the alignment process of the
respective alignment perspective. Table 2 shows direct and indirect
accountabilities for the three top executive roles under consideration.
5.4. Governance practices: relational mechanisms for
inter-organisational governance
According to de Haes and van Grembergen (2004) relational
mechanisms are a very important governance aspect. Problems to
be avoided are that business and IT do not understand each other
and/or are not working together. In order to achieve an effective
IT Governance de Haes and van Grembergen express the need for
two-way communication and a good participation/collaboration
relationship between business and IT people. Hence we are dealing with communication and collaboration issues. In this article we
distinguish with respect to these two issues ex-ante and ex-post
relational mechanisms, because several mechanisms should already
be planned before IOR formation, and later monitored, controlled
and adapted during the operation of an IOR (Dekker, 2004). In
Table 3 an overview on main relational mechanisms for interorganisational governance is given.
Typical ex-ante mechanisms enabling two-way communication
include a thorough planning of communication standards, rules,
schedules and plans. These coordination mechanisms depend on

Ex-post
mechanism

Measuring and evaluating

communication intensities
(Eschenbcher et al., 2010).
Determining
communication maturity
(Luftman, 2000).
Mutual adjust
communication
mechanisms, especially in
the case of reciprocal
inter-dependency (Kumar
& van Dissel, 1996).

Assessment through
multiple maturity models,
such as
SAMM: Strategic
alignment maturity model
(Luftman, 2000).
ICoNOs MM:
IT-enabled Collaborative
Networked Organisations
Maturity Model (Santana
Tapia, 2009).
IT Governance maturity
model (IT Governance
Institute, 2010).

the interdependence type (cf. Kumar & van Dissel, 1996). Additionally mutual adjustment might be needed for complex networked
congurations and for dealing with undened and incomplete
Thomas, and Thoben
ex-ante mechanisms. Eschenbcher, Zarvic,
(2010) recently presented an approach for measuring and evaluating the communication intensity in Collaborative Networks, which
is based on the Media Richness Theory and graph-theory. It offers
a general approach for looking at any two-way communication
for both intra- and inter-organisational communication. SAMM
(Strategic Alignment Maturity Model) by Luftman (2000) offers
with its communication dimension functionality for analysing the
communication maturity between business and IT people. It looks
at communication that is specic to the Business-IT Alignment context. The second issue, namely a good participation/collaboration
relationship, requires also specic ex-ante mechanisms, which
include according to our collaboration graph as can be seen in
Fig. 3b common goals prior to IOR formation. This contains a thoroughly planned partner selection, which could be based for instance
Seifert, & Thoben,
on IODs from the PS dependency category (Zarvic,
2010). Ex-post mechanisms include approaches for assessing and
diagnosing the collaboration aspect. Several maturity models are
applicable here, like shown in Table 3. Each of them has a specic focus: SAMM focuses on Business-IT Alignment issues within
a company (Luftman, 2000), ICoNOs MM is less pragmatic and
focuses on alignment with a focus on Collaborative Networks, and
the IT Governance maturity model focuses solely on the governance aspect (IT Governance Institute, 2010), which is also already
included as one dimension in SAMM.
We have provided in this section a solution for RQ2 by converting
a layered-architecture style framework in a graph-based representation, where all conceivable alignment perspectives are included.
Then we constructed accountability steering boards for CxOs that
are based on IODs. Additionally we distinguished direct and indirect accountabilities to indicate that we tackle governance from a
holistic perspective. Finally, we identied relational mechanisms
for avoiding problems due to misunderstandings and non-optimal
collaboration.

548

N. Zarvic et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 541549

Table 4
Argumentative-descriptive evaluation along key postulates of scientic research (cf. Frank, 2006).
Artefact

Abstraction

Originality

Justication

Solution for problem 1 (cf.

RQ1)

Yes, because denition graphs

represent concepts that abstract from
the complexity of different denitions
by proposing unied denitions.
Yes, because the presented IT
Governance practices are based on
previously abstracted concepts from
problem 1.

Yes, because the denition graphs are

novel and contribute to the overall
body of knowledge.

Yes, because the creation of the

solution followed a sound research
methodology and closes existing gaps.

Yes, because a structural conguration

of IT Governance practices with Graph
theory is novel.

Yes, because the creation of the

practices followed systematically
dened procedures.

Solution for problem 2 (cf.

RQ2)

6. Argumentative-descriptive evaluation
In this paper we have provided solutions for two interrelated
problems represented by two intervened research questions
by means of systematically designed artefacts. In IS Design Science
Research an evaluation step is to be seen as an important component of the design process, where several different evaluation
such as observational, analytical, experimental, testing or descriptive
evaluation methods are applicable (Hevner et al., 2004). However,
as stated by Frank (2006), innovative artefacts need time to get
accepted, and evaluation is mostly left to practice. Nevertheless,
research results should undergo also an evaluation in the academic
environment. In the context of this paper a descriptive evaluation
as one of the methods suggested by Hevner et al. (2004) is
appropriate for evaluating construction-oriented research results.
We follow the recommendations by Frank (2006) and consider for
our argumentative-descriptive evaluation the three key postulates
of scientic research, which are abstraction, originality and justication. Table 4 depicts our argumentative-descriptive evaluation in
tabular form, where it is shown that all key postulates are supported
and approved.
7. Summary and conclusions
IT Governance practices need increasingly to be tailored for
inter-organisational collaboration settings. Our paper provides
some approaches to cope with the complexity of making appropriate arrangement by presenting a new perspective mainly grounded
on basic concepts from Graph theory.
In this paper we have provided two interrelated key contributions. The rst contribution is of terminological nature and provides
a common understanding on key terms with a specic focus on the
concepts used in different denitions in the area of investigation.
We started with a structured analysis of the underlying terms cooperation, collaboration and coordination and presented a solution,
which enables researchers and practitioners to talk about the same
thing. Moreover the applied procedure is generally applicable to
any kind of denitions in any eld. The second contribution is of
structural and compositional nature and takes some focal concepts
of the previous solution as basis. This leads in our eyes to a valuable
contribution, because the IT Governance practices were systematically created and derived with the help of one of the key reference
disciplines of Collaborative Networks, namely Graph theory. The
graph-driven approach to deal with IT Governance practices and
different terminologies relevant for the eld under consideration
is to the best of our knowledge a novel contribution. It represents
therefore a different perspective on the topic than usual in traditional approaches, like for instance purely empirical research.
It should moreover be noted that the artefacts provide conceptual solutions to gaps and needs that are stated in the recent
literature. Note also that the presented results are relevant to both
academia and practice. In a recently performed survey about the
relevance of IT Governance and Business-IT Alignment in an interorganisational context in connection with interdependencies this

& Thomas, 2011).

claim is empiricially justied (cf. Stolze, Zarvic,
The results of this survey show clearly that the respondents (half
of them came from the academia eld and half of them came from
industry with an average work experience of 7.28 years after graduation) give high relevance to inter-organisational dependencies and
specic IT Governance structures, which conrms our statement.
However, our work has also some limitations. Especially, we
did not focus on the individual power of top executives that are
part of an accountability steering committee. We only outlined
the composition of committees. Nevertheless, such properties in
form of asymmetries are to be considered for the individual IORs
and could be addressed by means of weighted graphs. Also a
more thorough evaluation by means of the remaining evaluation methods described in Section 6 is planned. These represent
possible directions for future research activities. Nonetheless, our
artefacts provide some guidance for IT managers to cope systematically and undoubtfully with the complexity of their job in
inter-organisational collaboration settings.

Acknowledgments
The authors are very thankful for fruitful discussions with Prof.
Dr. em. Cornelis Hoede from the University of Twente, who gave
the inspiration and feedback on the rst part of this study.

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Novica Zarvic is a Research Scientist and doctoral candidate in the Information Management and Systems Group at the University of Osnabrck, Germany. He earned
his Master of Science degree in Information Engineering from the University of
Osnabrck and a diploma degree in Information Systems from the FHTW Berlin (University of Applied Sciences). He worked previously at the University of Twente in the
Netherlands and at the scientic engineering research institute BIBA Bremer Institut fr Produktion und Logistik GmbH. His research interests focus on Business-IT
Alignment, IT Governance and IT management in the area of Collaborative Business
Networks. His email address is novica.zarvic@uni-osnabrueck.de.
Carl Stolze is a Research Scientist and doctoral candidate in the Information Management and Systems Group at the University of Osnabrck, Germany. He earned his
diploma degree in Information Systems from the University of Mnster, Germany.
His current research interests are Sustainability, Business Process Management and
the human factor within IT management with a special focus on practical applicability. Besides research and teaching he works as an IT consultant. His email address
is carl.stolze@uni-osnabrueck.de.
Matthias Boehm is a Research Scientist and doctoral candidate in the Information Management and Systems Group at the University of Osnabrck, Germany.
He earned his Master degree in Information Systems from the University of
Mnster, Germany. His current research interests are IT management and IT consulting as well as new teaching approaches for those elds. His email address is
matthias.boehm@uni-osnabrueck.de.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Thomas is chair of the Information Management and Systems Group
at the University of Osnabrck, Germany. He received his Ph.D. degree in Information
Systems and his Habilitation (including a Venia Legendi) on Process Engineering,
both from Saarland University, Germany. His research interests focus among others on Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture Management and
Product-Service Systems. His email address is oliver.thomas@uni-osnabrueck.de.