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Information Technology Governance (ITG) can be regarded as a theme that has been developed to the extent that hardware and software were disseminated in organizations (Ein-Dor & Segev, 1982). Organizational structures and decision-making practices were revisited to accommodate features that, later, could become a source of competitive advantage, add value and be part of the senior management agenda (De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2006; Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999, 2000).
It is argued that, due to the origin of the ITG concept have foundations in organizational studies on corporate governance (Korac-Kakabadse; Kakabadse, 2001; Sambamurthy; Zmud, 1999), but with a central element (Information Technology/Information Systems) in the field of Information Systems (IS) (Ein-Dor & Segev, 1982), the ITG concept has become broad and ambiguous with inaccurate assessments (Luciano, Wiedenhoft, & Moron, 2015; Simonsson & Johnson, 2006).
Luciano, Wiedenhoft and Moron (2015) observed, through a review of the literature, that the term ‘IT governance’, present in the title of the studies, was not present in the content of the publications, which characterized more than 50% of those evaluated by the authors as rated view type. Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) classified studies as 'rated view type’ those in which the terms or subjects are used, but not as a matter of fact, i.e., they appear in the title or are quoted in different parts of the text, but its concept is not really applied, explained, or associated with related themes. For Ilott (2016), the ITG has a weak theoretical and ontological basis and its concept in the literature is not clear. Ilott (2016, p. 22) states that:
At different times, and in different publications, IT governance could simply be the distribution of decision-making responsibilities, or it could be a system of control, or it could be a function of corporate governance. It could be expressed as all of these in different publications, in the same year. The problem for the aspiring researcher and scholar of IT governance was in choosing which concept was most relevant, and whether all other views should be disregarded.
Magalhães and Gaspar (2019) consider that there is much dissonance in the nomenclatures used in ITG field, in addition to gaps in the understanding of ITG and what is communicated in relation to its operationalization in the daily lives of market professionals.
The discussion in literature on the ITG concept without establishing a clear definition may compromise the studies and influence the linear progression of study field. Researchers may be induced to use tools or sets of best practices in ITG as if they represented the ITG concept and its foundations (Simonsson & Johnson, 2006; Webb, Pollard, & Ridley, 2006).
In the face of the arguments, we have established the following research question: What is the concept of IT governance? The objective of this research was to analyze and discuss the composition of the ITG concept. Literatures that address the precepts of governance, corporate governance and information systems were used as foundations for the analysis of the formation of the ITG concept. Next, seminal and contemporary studies on the theme were reviewed, and the definitions presented were analyzed in the light of the techniques of lexical and content (Bardin, 2011) analysis (Camargo & Justo, 2013; Marchand & Ratinaud, 2012).