Why Cloud Governance Models Succeed or Stall

Abstract

Regulated banks rarely fail at cloud transformation for want of a technically sound governance model. They fail, or stall, for organisational and human reasons: sponsorship that lapses, decision rights that are contested, frontline staff who do not enact the model, and skills that lag the ambition. Yet the cloud-governance literature remains predominantly technical and control-oriented, treating the governance model as an artefact to be designed rather than a social object that must be legitimated and enacted. This paper develops a sociotechnical account of why cloud governance models succeed or stall inside regulated banks, drawing on the author's experience leading cross-functional stakeholder workshops and securing executive sign-off for multimillion-dollar cloud investment in a top-tier pan-African bank. We propose a conceptual model in which organisational, individual, and environmental antecedents act on adoption outcomes through the mediating construct of governance-model legitimacy and enactment, articulate a set of testable propositions, and offer a stakeholder-engagement playbook. Using an illustrative practitioner-informed analysis and two contrasting vignettes, we examine the factors that distinguish programmes that scale from those that stall and identify the failure modes that most reliably precede a stall. The contribution is a diagnostic lens, a set of propositions, and an engagement playbook that complement, rather than duplicate, the technical governance frameworks, accompanied by reusable appendices for practitioners and researchers.