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:

:image002.jpg
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.