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Tone from the Top


IT Governance is the process of ensuring effective and efficient IT strategies are used to manage risk, maintain quality information, generate business value and achieve company goals. Tone from the top is the behavioural example set from top management to the overall culture and ethical environment of the organisation (Schwartz, Dunfee, & Kline, 2005). With nearly 90% of PwC survey respondents indicating they believe “tone from the top” is critical in the success of a company, it is vital that senior management implement a no-tolerance attitude to risky IT behaviour (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2013).


An example of negative “tone from the top” was in a past job of a family member of mine. The senior management infiltrated a negative culture within the workplace due to low work ethic and no future goals or governance practices being put in place. This apathetic enforcement of IT governance set the workplace culture to be one where opportunity, pressure and rationalisation was high, where employees followed the attitude set by senior management.



The COBIT 5 framework is set to create value from IT by covering all aspects of business and IT governance ensuring there is a balance between maximising benefits while still reducing risk (Omari, Barnes, & Pitman, 2012). Due to the frameworks five principles and seven categories of enablers set to manage IT requirements and improved goals, it applies successfully to many organisations (Omari, Barnes, & Pitman, 2012). COBIT 5 could have been used within my family member’s organisation to improve culture by starting from the top of the organisation to use ‘tone from the top’ to infiltrate a positive culture (Aasi, Rusu, & Han, 2014).

References

Aasi, P., Rusu, L., & Han, S. (2014, March 10). The Influence of Culture on IT Governance: A Literature Review. Retrieved from IEEE Xplore: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6759148/authors#authors
Omari, L. A., Barnes, D. P., & Pitman, D. G. (2012, December 29). Optimising COBIT 5 for IT Governance: Examples from the Public Sector . Retrieved from Queensland University of Technology: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/55561/1/LoaiAlOmari_Optimising_COBIT_5_for_IT_Governance.pdf
PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2013). Tone from the Top Transforming words into action. Retrieved from PricewaterhouseCoopers: https://www.ibe.org.uk/userimages/pwc_tone_from_the_top_2013.pdf
Schwartz, M. S., Dunfee, T. W., & Kline, M. J. (2005, May). Tone at the Top: An Ethics Code for Directors? Retrieved from Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-005-1390-y#citeas


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