In This Issue

摘要

It is not uncommon to read in the popular business press that business executives are unsure how to assess the performance of their CIOs. To complicate matters, there are inconsistent views among strategic leadership researchers regarding the influence individual executives have on organizational outcomes. In the article "Examining the Antecedents and Consequences of CIO Strategic Decision-Making Authority: An Empirical Study," Preston, Chen, and Leidner argue that a possible reason that information technology (IT) does not deliver business value is because the CIOs often have limited strategic authority with respect to other C-level executives. Preston and his co-authors examine the social context within an organization that empowers the decision-making authority of the CIO and how the CIO can impact firm performance through IT. Using survey data of matched pairs of CIOs and senior business executives, this article finds empirical support that the CIO can impact firm performance through IT when provided with the proper decision-making authority. These results strongly suggest that CIOs must understand that they hold the key to IT impact through their decision-making authority and that power and politics within the organization play a significant role in shaping such authority. Just as important, organizations wanting to maximize IT impact need to develop an organizational environment that will provide the latitude for the CIO to take strategic actions and consequently deliver value to the organization. From an academic perspective this article proposes and validates a new theoretical construct, CIO decision-making authority, to examine the organizational implications of CIO leadership.