Exploring the relationships between information technology governance and project governance and their impacts on project performance: An empirical study

Nowadays many organizations have interest in project management as projects are part of their businesses. The success of projects affects the success of their businesses. In order to improve project performance, many researchers and practitioners have attempted to develop new project management tools and techniques as well as suggested to emphasize on project-based management and the competence of project team members (e.g., Besner and Hobbs, 2012; Crawford et al., 2008; Flyvbjerb et al., 2003; Hebert and Deckro, 2011; Packendorff, 1995; Sauer and Reich, 2009). Yet, various surveys and studies showed the success rate of projects was low (e.g., Flyvbjerb et al., 2003; Merrow et al., 1988; Miller and Lessard, 2001; Tajima, 2003). Several analysts found that a lack of governance was one of the main causes for project failures and recommended a new paradigm of governance, such as project governance, to help improve project performance (Altshuler and Luberoff, 2003; Crawford et al., 2008; Du and Yin, 2010; Fein, 2012). Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to create a framework for improving project performance using two types of governance, namely, information technology governance, and project governance. A framework is proposed to analyze the relationships among three constructs: 1) information technology governance, 2) project governance and 3) project performance. Using transaction cost economics, agency theory, and contingency theory, hypotheses are developed to assess the relationships among these constructs. A survey is employed to empirically examine these relationships. The results benefit both academics and practitioners as they provide a broad spectrum of how project performance can be improved by applying these two kinds of governance.