CIO Leadership -- Case Study

CIO Leadership -- Case Study

Summary of the Paper

We investigated how the CIO's job has changed over the past years and found that the CIOs' role has evolved to reflect both the firm's IS infrastructure and strategy. This has led to two versions of the role: an executive-level manager focused on the firm's strategy and processes, and a technical manager focused on minimizing costs by rationalizing and leveraging the existing IS infrastructure. As the role of IS within business organizations has grown in importance, so has the role of the CIO. Some CIOs have assumed the role of business strategists and process innovators. Thus CIOs are becoming executive-level leaders rather than mere service providers. They generally report directly to the CEO. Their managerial competencies impact the business through IS adoption within the socio-technical environments. Today's CIOs are deeply embedded in business organizations, helping CEOs strategize and business unit leaders to implement strategies. On the other hand, some CIOs have chosen, or been forced, to maintain a traditional technology-centric role. They then report to the COO or to the CFO and are typically responsible for managing a division that is perceived as a cost-center. In this role they are responsible for leveraging the organization's existing technology infrastructure to reduce cost. The degree to which a firm has standardized its IS architecture infrastructure, and the degree to which IS enables core products, services, processes, or competitive advantage of the firm impact the nature of the role.

Contribution of the Paper

Following are the contributions which have been achieved from the study of David S. Peterson. They include:

1. Know Thyself: COO (and other C-level executives) have begun to assume responsibility for the strategic thinking around IT deployment and use, taking over many of the responsibilities previously allocated to senior IT executives. This is ...