The Impact of Communication between CEOs and CIOs on their Shared Views of the Current and Future Role of IT

This research compares the views of CEOs and CIOs in the same organizations about the relative richness of four communications media (face-to-face, e-mail, business memo, telephone), and the current and future roles of IT in their organizations. Overall, CEOs are found to be more optimistic about the expected impacts of future IT projects. Organizations in which there was greater shared vision about the future role of IT also reported more frequent CEO/CIO communications utilizing communications channels perceived to be richer: face-to-face and e-mail.     

A survey on CIO concerns-do enterprise architecture frameworks support them?

The challenge of IT management is today considerable. In industry, the organizational role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been promoted as the owner of these challenges. In spite of a general acceptance of the problems associated with the responsibilities of the CIO, very little academic research has been conducted on the issues and constraints of this role. In order to address these shortcomings, this article presents the results of a survey in which Swedish CIOs have prioritized their most important concerns. In academia, a response to the IT system management challenges has presented itself in the discipline of Enterprise Architecture. The article argues that the CIO role is the primary stakeholder of Enterprise Architecture, so his/her need for decision support should guide Enterprise Architecture research and framework development. Therefore, the article presents a brief review over how well two existing Enterprise Architecture frameworks address the surveyed concerns of the CIO. Results from the survey indicate that the three highest prioritized concerns of CIOs are to decrease the cost related to the business organization, to improve the quality of the interplay between the IT organization and the business organization and to provide new computer-aided support to the business organization. The comparison between the CIOs' prioritization and the foci of the frameworks shows some discrepancies. The largest disharmony lies in the lack of decision support for issues related to the IT organization. Furthermore, support for explicitly estimating and managing costs is lacking within the frameworks.     

Innovative IT climates: CIO perspectives

In many organizations the CIO is a key driver of business innovation. This research investigates innovative CIOs in the context of their organizational climate theory. We explore the concept of innovative IT climates through qualitative analyses of interviews with 36 innovative CIO's. We identify and characterize four dimensions of innovative IT climates using a theoretical model based on the climate literature. Inductive grounded-theoretic methods are then utilized to develop two additional dimensions of innovative IT climates - reality-checking and promoting credibility. Findings expand our theoretical and empirical understanding of innovative IT climates and provide practitioners with specific examples of how CIO's are actively working to create innovative IT climates.     

Business–IT alignment maturity of companies in China

Business–IT alignment has been consistently ranked as the number one concern of IT and business executives. Maintaining the alignment has been found to lead to stronger business performance, higher perceived value of IT and improved IS strategic planning; therefore addressing the issue is both important and timely. The economic growth in China in the last decade has led to greater availability of IT and its widespread use as a critical resource. Despite the increasing interest in Chinese IS issues by both researchers and practitioners, empirical research focusing on human- and organization-related IS issues in China is scarce. Using data collected from 130 business and IT executives from 22 companies in China, 11 of which were multinationals operating in China, we explored several questions in the area of business–IT alignment. An instrument designed to measure the six dimensions of business–IT alignment maturity was cross-validated using a sample of companies in China. Then, the instrument was refined to develop a measurement method that offered better reliability and validity in the context of Chinese companies. The relationship between the alignment maturity dimensions and IS strategic alignment was then examined. Finally, the alignment maturity of companies in China was assessed to provide a snapshot of business–IT alignment in China. A comparison between the 11 Chinese domestic companies and 11 multinational operating in China provided insight into the different IT practices of the two types of companies. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

IS Strategy and IS Contribution: CEO and CIO Perspectives

This research compares views of CEOs and CIOs in the same organization about the contribution of IS to their organization and about the IS strategy that produced the contribution. The executives agree about the extent of IS contribution, but disagree about how IS strategy produces it. CEOs view analysis and proactiveness strategies as the two top keys to doing so, whereas CIOs see innovativeness and aggressiveness strategies as the two top keys.     

The CIO stereotype: Content,bias, and impact

The current work examines whether there is a stereotype of CIOs that can influence decisions about their role in organizations. We find evidence for a CIO stereotype informed by both an IT stereotype and a general leader stereotype, although CIOs are perceived to have more in common with IT personnel than leaders. Two experiments showed that the CIO stereotype was capable of biasing perceptions of CIOs’ suitability to occupy strategic roles (i.e., a “glass ceiling” effect) and the extent to which they are blamed for negative outcomes (i.e., a “glass cliff” effect). These findings point to the challenges CIOs face in gaining and maintaining strategic leadership roles in organizations.     

Cios' Perspectives on Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence (CI) has become an important source of information for business planning and other activities because it provides information about the present and future behavior of competitors, suppliers, customers, technologies, acquisitions, markets, and the general business environment. This article discusses the results of a recent survey of CIOs and CEOs about competitive intelligence practices in their firms. the authors anticipate an increase in competitive intelligence activities that will require the increased use of IT and suggest a heightened awareness that this spiraling situation is likely to place increasing demand on the IT function and the CIO.     

Alignment within the software development unit: Assessing structural and relational dimensions between developers and testers

Just as business-IT alignment has received significant focus as a strategic concern in the IS literature, it is also important to consider internal alignment between the diverse subunits within the IT organization. This study investigates alignment between developers and testers in software development to understand alignment within the IT unit. Prior evidence of tension between these sub-groups (and others as well) suggests that all is not necessarily well within the IT organization. Misalignment within the IT unit can certainly make it difficult for the IT unit to add strategic value to the organization. This study is an important initial step in investigating IT subunit alignment which can inform future research focusing on the alignment of other IT subunits such as architecture, operations, and customer-support. Using theoretical concepts from strategic business-IT alignment, we test a research model through a survey of professional software developers and testers. Results suggest that relational but not structural dimensions influence IT subunit alignment.     

Technology executives in the changing accounting information environment: Impact of IFRS adoption on CIO compensation

Accounting regulatory changes that affect the information technology (IT) infrastructure of firms have prompted Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to take the lead in aligning IT changes with new reporting requirements. This study investigates the associations between the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and CIO compensation. We find a significant increase in CIO compensation in the post-IFRS period, which is higher in non-IT firms than in IT firms. Moreover, pay is at a premium for CIOs equipped with more educational background in business. We discuss the implications of our study and offer suggestions for future research.     

Factors for Fractional CIO engagement success

As small- to medium-sized enterprises struggle with IT management, an increasing number appoint Fractional CIOs, i.e., CIOs that work part-time for multiple organizations simultaneously. We use Q-methodology to empirically evaluate the relative importance of factors for Fractional CIO engagement success and find that trust, top management team support, and the Fractional CIO's integrity are most important. Further, we identify three groups of Fractional CIOs: Strategic IT Advisors, Full-ownership CIOs, and Change Agents. Our results guide organizations when hiring and working with Fractional CIOs and provide the basis for further research on Fractional CIO archetypes.     

Empathy,CIOCEO relationship,and digital transformation

This study investigates how one personality trait of CIOs and CEOs, i.e., their empathy, affects CIOCEO relationships and then the outcomes of firms’ ongoing digital transformation. We hypothesize that the cognitive and emotional empathy of CIOs and CEOs can establish mutual understanding and trust, which in turn improve digital transformation. We empirically validate these hypotheses based on a survey of 105 pairs of matched CIOs and CEOs. The findings reveal asymmetric effects: CIOs’ empathy improves CIOCEO relationships and then digital transformation, but CEOs’ empathy does not show significant effects. We then discuss our findings and implications to theory and practice.     

CRUDi framework proposal: financial industry application

The alignment of information systems with the business goals of an organisation, although a topic of great importance, is not always properly valued or taken into consideration. In general, managers have different opinions to chief information officers (CIOs) in relation to IS, especially with regard to their importance and value to the business and also in terms of investment needs. Here, we discuss and study new approaches to methods and tools for assessing the relative importance of each information system to business, focusing on the financial sector including banks and insurance companies. We suggest the introduction of new key indicators for better decision support and to identify investment priorities, and present results regarding the relative importance of each process to support the business strategy. The primary goal for the inherent research project is to analyse the main problems and difficulties encountered by IS and IT managers, featuring different players and how they relate. The main contributions of this work are the CRUDi framework as a tool to improve alignment between business and IS strategies and the CRUDi survey and its results qualifying the financial sector's opinion regarding the relative importance of processes and investments.     

Achieving IT‐based synergies through regulation‐oriented and consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities

This study aims at exploring the IT governance capabilities that enable organizations to achieve IT‐based synergies. Following existing work on the contextualization of theories and drawing on the resource‐based view of the firm (RBV), we develop an RBV of IT‐based synergies in two steps. First, we adopt existing context‐specific constructs and relationships from prior work on IT governance capabilities, IT relatedness, and synergies to develop a preliminary contextualization of the RBV. Second, to further refine our theoretical framework, we conduct an exploratory field study that includes interviews with 26 CIOs and other IT executives from 21 multibusiness firms. Our findings suggest that IT governance capabilities lead to IT‐based synergies through IT relatedness and business process relatedness. We found regulation‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT roles and IT processes) to increase IT relatedness, while consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT groups and relational capabilities) had a positive effect on business process relatedness. Our results suggest that, in isolation, IT and business process relatedness lead to IT cost synergies, while collectively enabling IT‐induced business synergies. Our study is among the first to treat IT relatedness as an endogenous construct and to explicitly integrate business process relatedness into the IT governance domain. Our context‐specific decomposition of IT governance capabilities helps to better explain their links to IT and business process relatedness. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the tension between IT‐based synergies and business‐IT alignment. Decision‐makers are guided in developing IT governance capabilities to achieve IT‐based synergies.     

IT centrality,IT management model,and contribution of the IT function to organizational performance: A study in Canadian hospitals

The characterization of the IT function in organizations represents a central topic of investigation in the information systems field. The main purpose of this study was to predict the contribution of the IT function to organizational performance by focusing on the centrality of IT and the IT management profile as primary determinants. A cross-sectional survey of CIOs working in Canadian hospitals reveals that IT centrality positively influences the strategic orientation of the IT management model. In turn, the stronger the strategic orientation of the IT management model in place, the greater is the IT function’s contribution to organizational performance.     

Reenergizing People after Downsizing

The bottom line demands placed on severely downsized IS organizations require that CIOs and senior IT executives restore the trust and empowerment necessary to excellent internal and external customer service. Guidelines are provided for this reenergizing process, which marks the first step in transforming the IS organization into a flexible learning organization that is responsive to the changing business environment.     

Investigating the effects of IS strategic leadership on organizational benefits from the perspective of CIO strategic roles

In this study, the effects of IS strategic leadership on organizational outcomes are examined from the perspective of CIO strategic roles. A field survey is conducted that collects data from 110 matched pairs of CIOs and business executives within organizations. Our findings suggest that strategic leadership significantly affects both organizational benefits and information system quality. Further, we found that IS quality significantly mediates the relationship between IS strategic leadership and organizational benefits. We also note that IS vision significantly moderates the relationship between IS strategic leadership and IS quality, although it does not moderate the relationship between IS strategic leadership and organizational benefits or the relationship between IS quality and organizational benefits.     

The conundrum of IT management

This paper presents a robust argument as to why it can be difficult for chief information officers (CIOs) to generate business value from investments that their organizations make in information technology (IT) with contemporary organizational structures, authority patterns, processes and mindsets. This argument is built on the subtle premise that organizations should not seek to merely manage IT but to manage the delivery of business value through IT. It takes the view that this latter quest is knowledge-based and that the knowledge resources to successfully deliver this value are distributed throughout the organization. Crucially, this knowledge is not located solely within the IT function, presenting a challenge for the CIO for its integration and coordination. With the CIO having little or no jurisdiction over all required knowledge, its deployment will therefore be fragmented. The conundrum of IT management is how to generate value through IT without having access and authority over necessary resources. Research and practitioner implications of this analysis are highlighted.     

Can Political Skill Enhance Business and IT Knowledge?

ABSTRACT

We examine whether Chief Information Officers’ (CIOs’) political skill enhances their IT and business knowledge as a means of influencing executive teams’ commitment to strategic and operational IT initiatives. We empirically examine these relationships using data collected from 139 CIOs. The results suggest CIOs’ business and IT knowledge is significantly related to influencing executive team commitment to strategic and operational IT initiatives, but political skill only enhances business knowledge for influencing executive team commitment to operational IT initiatives.     

The moderating role of IT-business alignment in the relationship between IT governance,IT competence,and innovation

Results from a survey of senior executives/officers in charge of IT suggest that while greater IT governance triggers more innovation, IT-business alignment does not moderate this relationship. Executive management IT competence has a direct and positive impact on innovation, and this relationship is stronger when moderated by IT-business alignment. However, regardless of IT-business alignment, innovation is not significantly affected by the board’s IT competence but is positively impacted by IT intensity. This study extends the IS literature on the role of IT in innovation and contributes to the IT governance literature.     

An examination of the antecedents and consequences of organizational IT innovation in hospitals

The healthcare industry is widely recognized as information-intensive and IT is considered to be an intrinsic component of the success of healthcare organizations such as hospitals. While both researchers and practitioners have argued that hospitals should aspire to be IT innovators, most tend to be IT laggards. An understanding of the factors that drive hospitals to become IT innovators remains an important phenomenon of interest. However, there is a lack of theory-driven empirical research that systematically investigates the factors that influence a hospital’s strategic choice to be an IT innovator and the influence of IT innovation on hospital performance. This study bridges the extant gaps in the literature by developing and testing an integrated model that seeks to understand why certain hospitals are IT innovators. Using IT innovation theory as our theoretical foundation, we examine three antecedents, including the chief information officer (CIO) strategic leadership, the top management team’s (TMT) attitude toward IT, and the hospital’s climate. Further, we examine the influence of IT innovation on the impact of IT within the hospital and the influence of IT impact on the hospital’s financial performance. The research model was tested using both survey and archival data from 70 matched pairs of hospital CIOs and executives. The quantitative analysis is supplemented with by interviews with 10 participating CIOs to further examine the relationship of the CIO to hospital IT innovation. The results suggest that the CIO strategic leadership and the TMT’s attitude toward IT are key factors that influence IT innovation; however, the influence of a hospital’s climate on organizational IT innovation is contingent upon the CIO’s level of strategic leadership. The results also suggest that hospitals that are IT innovators can generate greater impact from IT, which in turn results in greater performance for the hospital. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions are discussed.