The Role of
the CIO
The
Chief Information Officer is the leader of the information technology function.
IS
leadership is concerned with the roles, responsibilities, reporting structure,
job titles, and personal characteristics of IS leaders within
organizations. During the 1960s and
1970s, the IS leadership position was commonly titled “EDP[1] Manager”. Today, we routinely call the IS leader,
“Chief Information Officer,” to signify the role’s place
among other top business executives (although contemporary IS leaders may have
other titles such as VP of IT). While IS leaders have traditionally struggled
to earn their place alongside other senior business leaders, IS leaders have
made significant progress during the past forty years.
As students will be familiar
with the role of the CIO, the aim of the group presentation is to further
explore the attributes of effective CIOs.
The group should find current
research on:
- Current issues facing CIOs, such as top ten lists found in
practitioner magazines such as MIS Quarterly Executive, CIO Insight,
CIO magazine, Gartner Group, or Computerworld
- Demographics of typical CIO, particularly for Fortune 500
companies. This may include sex, age, years of experience, background. We
like easy to read graphs and tables for this section, such as:
Source:
SIM 2008 Survey (n = ).
- Turnover among CIOs--very few CIOs seem to last in these positions
for very long. Is the average years of service for a CIO different than
the average years of service for other top executives?
- Please be sure to include 10 refereed articles on academic articles
on the role of the CIO and IT leadership. I put a list below so you can
see the types of journals to search.
- Please stress the importance of business and people skills required
for a CIO. Clearly technical skills, while valuable, are subordinate to
general management skills.
Case Study on 2 to 3 CIOs:
- Interview 2 to 3 CIOs to determine how they see their role in the
organization. Be sure to pick a large enough organization of at least 1000
employees or else the person may be titled “CIO” but really
may perform mundane functions like network management.
- I recommend that international students interview one CIO from an
non-US company.
- What are their biggest challenges?
- How do they spend their day?
- What is their background?
- What keeps them up at night?
- How do they view the relative importance of their business, people,
and technical skills to job performance?
- What is their relationship like with their CEO? How frequently do
the CIO and CEO directly communicate?
- Which IT related project has been the biggest success under their
leadership? Why? What lessons were learned?
- Which IT related project has been the most troublesome? Why? What
lessons were learned?
- How do they compare with the survey data your group found above?
Finding CIOs to interview. Most CIOs are very willing to
schedule a ½ interview with students. If you work or have worked at a large
organization, you may try contacting the CIO or CIO’s secretary
directly. If you have never worked
for a large organization, start asking friends or relatives if they can help.
Interview Tip: Very
intelligent people tend to provide generalizations, such as "My
relationship with my CEO is good." What you want is to prompt the CIOs for
rich details & stories, such as the frequency of their communications, who
initiates the communications, if/when do they socialize, etc. If the
interviewee gives a generalization or platitude, prompt him or her for specific
examples.
Provide the CIO's Company Background such
as:
- Size of company in terms of sales and profits
- Major products the company sells
- General characteristics of their customers
- Organizational chart--who does the CIO report to?
- How many people work for the IT organization?
- What is the annual IT budget?
Be sure to compare your CIOs with each other and with
the findings from current literature.
For example, a cross-comparison of CIOs might be organized as a table:
|
Attribute |
From secondary Sources like surveys |
Interview 1 |
Interview 2 |
Interview 3 |
|
Educational
Background |
|
|
|
|
|
Professional
Experience (IT and/or business operations) |
|
|
|
|
|
Years
as CIO |
|
|
|
|
|
CIO
reports to |
|
|
|
|
|
Gender |
|
|
|
|
|
Etc… |
|
|
|
|
Another great source is a weekly CIO Talk Radio show.
Go to http://www.ciotalkradio.com/.
This is free if you register and you’ll hear from top CIOs from around
the world.
Examples of Academic
Research on Role of CIOs:
Enns,
H., Huff, S., and Golden, B. (2003) “CIO influence behaviors: The impact
of technical background,” Information &
Management, Vol. 40, 5, May
pp. 467.
Feeny, D., Edwards, B., and Simpson, K. (1992)
“Understanding the CEO/CIO Relationship,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 16, 4, December pp. 435-446.
Huff, S., Maher, P., and Munro (2006) “Information
Technology and Board of Directors: Is There an IT Attention Deficit?”MIS Quarterly Executive, June Vol. 5, 2, pp. 55-68.
Kaarst-Brown, M. (2005) “Understanding An
Organization’s View of the CIO: The Role of Assumptions About IT,” MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 4, 2,
June pp. 287-301
Karahanna,
E., and Watson, R. (2006) “Information Systems Leadership,” IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol. 53, 2, May pg. 171.
Leidner, D., and Mackay, J. (2007) “How
Incoming CIOs Transition into their New Jobs,” MIS Quarterly Executive, March
Vol. 6, 1, pp. 17-28.
Leidner, D., Beatty, R., Mackay, J. (2003)
“How CIO’s Manage IT during Economic Decline: Surviving and
Thriving Amid Uncertainty,” MIS
Quarterly Executive, March 2003, Vol. 2, 1, March pp. 1-14.
Nolan, R., and McFarlan, F.W. (2005) “Information
Technology and the Board of Directors,” Harvard Business Review, October p. 96-106.
Preston, D., Leidner, D., and Chen, D. (2008), “CIO
Leadership Profiles: Implications of Matching CIO Authority and Leadership
Capability on IT Impact, MIS Quarterly
Executive, Vol. 7, 2, pp. 57-69.