Organizations that operate under an IT monarchy place key business unit and technical decisions in the hands of the CIO. Under the duopoly method, de… - Jeanne W. Ross

To date, most research on information technology (IT) outsourcing concludes that firms decide to outsource IT services because they believe that outside vendors possess production cost advantages. Yet it is not clear whether vendors can provide production

Assessing the value of information technology (IT) has never been easy. Delayed benefits, unintended uses, business changes, and hidden support costs inhibit meaningful evaluation of individual IT investments. This was true when most investments were focused on the support of a single business process or functional area. It is even more true as business executives ponder implementations of shared technologies like data warehouses and networks, replacement of large legacy systems, and reskilling of the IT staff. Although firms introduce some systems to reduce costs and can evaluate them in terms of their success in doing so, they want many IT initiatives to support a firm's objectives. The value of these initiatives rest in their contributions to a firm's competitiveness, which is often non quantifiable and uncertain.

Senior executive teams create mechanisms to govern the management and use of each of these assets both independently and together.... Governance of the key assets occurs via a large number of organizational mechanisms, for example structures, processes, procedures and audits.