Abstract

IT governance matters in information system implementation. However, managers are left with generative strategies to address contradictory issues in health information system(HIS) implementation. The prescriptive and unilateral IT governance framework is inadequate to design appropriate IT governance mechanisms in complex HIS where diversified actors with different IT perspectives are in play. IS research advocate to employ collaborative and loose coupling strategies to address contradictory issues in complex health setting, yet it is rarely depicting how managers employ collaborative and loose coupling strategies to incorporate all stakeholders. This study aimed to explore how managers design IT governance mechanism in the case of District Health Information System 2(DHIS-2) adoption in public health care setting where multiple stakeholders are in play. Institutional logic concept is used to understand how stakeholders’ principles, assumptions and goal influenced IT governance mechanism design. The finding depicts first how lack of resource and technical capacity generate dominant actors and later how these dominant actors’ institutional logic shaped IT governance mechanism design. The study highlighted how high level official new to the context with decision right guided senior managers to devise various proactive IT governance mechanisms (stakeholders’ participation, experience sharing, demonstration, training, piloting, internal and external system evaluation, delaying) to consider new alternatives. These IT governance mechanisms enabled managers and actors to distance from the prevailing institutional logics, garnered more actors with resource and technical capacity to the new system, weakening the dominant institutional logics and used as a foundation to make prompt decision. On the other hand the study highlighted how dominant institutional logics challenged this entrepreneurship with country wide established network for decade. The study highlighted the importance of high level official distance from the prevailing institutional logics and guidance to enable senior managers designing better IT governance mechanism which incorporates all stakeholders for system adoption.

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