Executive or Functional Manager? The Nature of the CIO's Job (original) (raw)
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Despite the strategic importance of information technology (IT) to contemporary firms, chief information officers (CIO) often still have varying degrees of strategic decisionmaking authority. In this study, we apply the theory of managerial discretion to define CIO strategic decision-making authority and argue that the CIO's level of strategic decision-making authority directly influences IT's contribution to organization performance. We also draw on the power and politics perspective in the strategic decisionmaking literature to identify the direct antecedents to the CIO's strategic decisionmaking authority. A theoretical model is presented and empirically tested using survey data collected from a cross-industry sample of 174 matched pairs of CIOs and top business executives through structural equation modeling. The results suggest that organizational climate, organizational support for IT, the CIO's structural power, the CIO's level of strategic effectiveness, and a strong partnership between the CIO and top management team directly influence the CIO's level of strategic decision-making authority within the organization. The results also suggest that the CIO's strategic decision-making authority in the organization directly influences the contribution of IT to firm performance and that effective CIOs have a greater influence on IT's contribution when provided with strategic decision-making authority.
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Effective initiation and execution of IS/T projects and systems has become a critical core competence for many organizations. One key to this is the influence of the senior executive responsible for IS/T, often called the Chief Information Officer (CIO). This paper explores the notions of influence and influence behaviors, top executive influence behaviors, how CIOs influence peers in the top management team, and reports the findings from an exploratory study. Contrary to some of the extant literature, the findings suggest that CIO influence can vary both in terms of how it is utilized and its effectiveness. Furthermore, CIO influence is exercised for the initiation of information systems projects, the implementation of these projects, and on overall business strategy. The paper concludes with a series of observations that summarize the findings.
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International Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance, 2016
The authors investigate the determinants of CIOs' organizational role and tasks. They first review previous studies, which they classify as either evolutionary or CIO role studies. They consider them to be characteristic to the usage of certain technologies or certain periods of times. The authors modify Leavitt's well-known organization diagnostic model to describe factors that shape the role and the tasks of CIOs over time, industries and technologies. They validate the model from interviews with 36 CIOs within six industries covering the time period from 1960s to present times. The authors also show that the model can be used to categorize prior research findings. They then use the model to describe how technology influences business strategy and how business strategy and technology impacts CIOs' role and tasks and vice versa. The authors discovered that the modified Leavitt model is a useful description of factors that both define CIOs' role and tasks at any part...
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The dominant interpretation of the function and role of the CIO is technology-related with business-ICT alignment as a core concept. We criticize this vision as a product of the dominant interpretive scheme and show how the logic of this scheme restricts the worldview of CIO’s and researchers. To overcome these restrictions, we adopt an alternative interpretive scheme based on our twenty years of experience with collaboration with information managers. This scheme is essentially generative and synthetic. We define the function and role of the CIO as the orchestrator of the information-related activities of the organization. To be successful, the CIO should further maintain equilibrium between inspiring and innovating the organization and informing and architecturing it. Finally, we argue for the use of a new language that can involve all stakeholders in these activities to make them enthusiastic participants. Based on this new view, the CIO can emanate information leadership.
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2005
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2014
Information is the valuable entity and most important gradients for several development activities which include societal, economical, political, and educational and so on. Information professionals are those who handle information and information activities including collection, selection, organization, processing and management and ultimately dissemination. Chief Information Officer/ CIO are apex delegates in an organization and institutions for information activities and overall Information Administration. Chief Information Officer/ CIO today work as information professional and side by side technology professionals as they need to do so many technological and managerial tasks too. This paper talks about Chief Information Officer/ CIO; including their traditional role and technological role; especially Network Administrator, Web Administrator, Database Manager and overall System Manager who handle complete Information Administration of the concerned organization and sister organi...
The Relationship Between Organisational Strategic IT Vision and CIO Roles: One Size Does Not Fit All
Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 2014
The organisational strategic IT vision has been considered as a key contingency that affects the role of Information Technology (IT) leadership in organisations. Using the theoretical lens of the contingency approach to leadership, this study investigates the influence of strategic IT vision of an organisation on the Chief Information Officer (CIO) role and structural power. A large-scale survey was conducted with CIOs of Australian organizations. The results of the data analysis show that the Educator role of the CIO seems to be more important in organisations that articulated a 'transform' vision of IT compared to organisations that focus on IT for automation. The results also show that CIOs in organisations that strategically view IT as a transformation or informate-down orientation gave the role of Information Steward more attention than CIOs working in organisations where IT is viewed as a means for automating processes. The findings also show that there is significant positive association between the organisation's strategic IT vision and the CIO's structural power in terms of reporting structure and CIO job title. This study has implications for practitioners as the findings indicate the necessity for CIOs to align their roles with their firm's IT vision and suggest that Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) should empower their firm's CIOs in terms of their reporting structure and job title as the role of IT in the organisation progresses from the lower strategic vision of IT (automate) to the highest vision (transform).
The role of the strategic and adaptive Chief Information Officer in higher education
Education and Information Technologies, 2013
The study examined the evolving role of Information Technology executives in higher education with the objective of detailing the skills and experiences necessary to be a Chief Information Officer (CIO), the expectations of the leaders in higher education of these individuals and how leaders in higher education view the role of the CIO. The CIO position is no longer highly focused on technical issues, but has influence on the institution's mission critical strategies, which clearly shows that the position has experienced organizational ascension. The study uses a qualitative methodologyphenomenologyto explore the CIO position in higher education. The results are discussed in the following three dimensions: skills & experiences, expectations of the leaders in higher education of the CIOs, and how leaders in higher education view the role of the CIO. The findings indicated the need for CIOs to have multidimensional personalities, diverse work experience, higher education background with the ability to strategically adapt according to the institution's needs. Therefore, the study has implications for universities in the process of hiring a CIO and addresses an important aspect of higher education administration. Most importantly, the Association of American University's (AAU) CIOs followed the traditional path to the position (Birnbaum and Umbach in Review of Higher Education 24(3):203-217, 2001).