IT Leaders: Who are They and Where do They Come From?

1. INTRODUCTION The field of Information Systems (IS) has grown phenomenally within the past several decades, and IS researchers have investigated various aspects relating to this growth. One of these research domains addresses the career paths of IS graduates and has yielded results that show that, upon graduation, IS (we hereafter use IS to refer to Management IS, Computer IS, Information Science & Systems, and Information Technology) graduates work in various industries as programmers, network engineers, database administrators, business/system analysts, and business/IT leaders. A number of studies have also sought and identified the required skills for IS graduates (Downey, McMurtrey, and Zeltmann, 2008; Lee and Mirchandani, 2010). Among the highest managerial IS-related positions to which these graduates can rise to is that of an IT leader (we hereafter use IT leader to refer to the top-most manager in the firm in-charge of IS and may be referred to as Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Vice President (VP) of Information Services/Systems, and VP of IS among other titles). A number of researchers have also explored various aspects related to the holders of this position. The various themes addressed include the IT leaders' tenure and reporting structure (Banker, Hu, Pavlou, and Luftman, 2011), the performance and turnover rates of IT leaders (Hunter, 2010), IT leaders' business knowledge (Armstrong and Sambamurthy, 1999), the values and qualities of effective IT leaders (Earl and Feeny, 1994), and IT leaders' background and experience (Applegate and Elam, 1992). A detailed listing of these and other past studies that explore various dimensions of IT leadership is shown in Table 8 in the appendix. The table also includes the variables and the sampling methods used in the corresponding studies. Although IT leaders are the highest ranked firm executives overseeing the entire organization's Information Technology Governance (ITG) practices (Banker et al., 2011), their positions and roles are relatively new. In contrast, the roles and responsibilities of other top level executives--such as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), Chief Operating Officers (COOs), and other members of the Top Management Team (TMT)--have existed for a longer period (Schubert, 2004). However, in the recent past, the creation of new IT leader positions has been on the rise (Chatterjee, Richardson, and Zmud, 2001; Khallaf and Skantz, 2011). Thus, the position of an IT leader has become more influential due to the multifaceted role of IT in organizations. For instance, IT creates business value by guaranteeing better IT service delivery through the alignment of IT and business strategies (Agarwal and Sambamurthy, 2002) as well as firm-driven IT innovation endeavors (Karanja and Bhatt, 2011). The potential to create and sustain a firm's competitive advantage is premised on the organization's managerial IT skills (Mata, Fuerst, and Barney, 1995). Consequently, the roles played by IT in the overall internal and external organizational integration, coupled with government legislation--such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules as well as the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act (Sarbanes and Oxley, 2002)--have resulted in the incorporation of IT leaders into many firms' organizational TMTs (Ranganathan and Jha, 2008; Preston, Chen, and Leidner, 2008). This inclusion of IT leaders in TMTs has been shown to enrich the IT leaders' business knowledge by offering them opportunities to access the latest information on business trends, thus enabling them to relate IT's role to the overall organizational strategy (Armstrong and Sambamurthy, 1999; Preston, Chen, and Leidner, 2008). Membership in the TMT also offers an IT leader a chance to establish rapport with other members of the TMT by acting as an IT consultant. Additionally, the presence of an IT leader in the TMT may also enhance other members' IT knowledge and create an appreciation of the role of IT in the organization. …