Governance of IT

1 HISTORY OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

I believe that, before you can fully appreciate the need for the corporate governance of IT, you need to have an appreciation of corporate governance. There is often confusion around what is meant by corporate governance, and I have heard colleagues talk about organisations where ‘no corporate governance is in place’. However, if the organisation is running well, making a profit – or at least not making a loss and meeting compliance requirements in the way of tax and other legal obligations – then it must surely have some form of governance in place?

The purpose of this chapter is to look at the history of corporate governance and to establish that it is not a twentieth-century whim and fancy brought about by ...