ja_mageia

Purpose of this paper

The goal of the paper is to detect any gaps in the legislators and practitioners approaches in information systems design and implementation and to evaluate their impact on organizational and managerial level.

Design/methodology/ approach

Basic Information System requirements are presented for compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). These requirements are compared with the provisions made by the vendors (like SAP, Microsoft, etc.) to address the issues raised by the legislators and the OECD’s Corporate Governance principles and guidelines to provide a holistic approach to the problem of corporate governance system alignment.

Findings

The questions raised by the author are: Did the legislators encapsulate the real essence of the OECD principles and did the ES designers managed to fully cover the letter and the spirit of the law or the found a legalist – normative solution to the problem of compliance (not alignment) with the laws and principles leading to a deviation from the original principles? The author shows that the latter is the case in a number of systems or modules designed to address the issue.

Practical implications

Practitioners, academics and developers - vendors may alter their perspective  of how an information system is placed within the context of the firm.

What is original/value of paper

A new approach in designing information systems is needed in order to comply with the new legal – regulatory framework and market needs.

Keywords

Corporate Governance, Enterprise Systems.

Paper type

Conceptual paper