Special issue on the evolution of the CIO role
Authors: Stephens Charlotte S. 
Published: October 2004

Articles in this special issue address the evolution of the CIO
role during the past and predict drivers for change in the future.
This Janus approach is well-represented by an in-depth study of the
IT leader's role over more than forty years at Texaco and by a
study using interviews with over fifty IT leaders about the "future
of in-house IT organizations."

The enthralling Texaco study should be required reading for all
IS graduate students. As a saga of our profession's history and the
evolution of the CIO role, this article provides a painful,
personal view of IT leaders' struggle to gain recognition for the
IT function's real contributions. "The Evolution of the Corporate
IT Function and the Role of the CIO at Texaco -- How do Perceptions
of IT's Performance Get Formed?" (Hirscheim, Porra, Parks)
questions a basic assumption of prior research, that the IT
function and the CIO have failed in some way: failed to establish a
relationship with top management, failed to demonstrate value,
failed to improve the performance of the organization, failed to
provide an IT vision or link that vision to the organization's
strategy.

This longitudinal study demonstrates clearly that "Texaco's IT
function did a stellar job," and that the "small investment in IT
was put to an increasingly effective use at a staggering rate."
CIOs or IT leaders have been effective at Texaco, some amazingly
so. Yet during all these years from 1957 on, there was not a time
when "top management or users expressed their satisfaction with the
IT function." The authors conclude that "top management perceptions
of the IT leaders' and IT functions' performance developed in a
vacuum."

Applying Peppard and Ward's perceptions gap categories,
Hirscheim, Porra, and Parks call into question the very questions
which have been asked in IT leadership research, and offer some new
directions. Interestingly, the authors posit that charge back
systems which reflect cost but not contribution and which are
accumulated in overhead accounts may be the "most consequential
mistake the IT profession has made so far."

The perception gap is also a theme in Reich and Nelson's "In
Their Own Words: CIO Visions about the Future of In-House IT
Organizations." They conducted interviews with fifty CIOs and IT
leaders in twenty-two organizations. As the technology has become
more complex, user expectations have become very high: "Expectation
is instantaneous delivery at zero cost, with zero bugs and zero
defects." Their findings are presented in two sections: "Drivers of
change" and "Transitions in in-house IT organizations." The
richness of experience and insights into the future revealed by the
authors' analyses of these fifty interviews is rare. Quotations
selected for inclusion are memorable: "the IT workforce are the
coal workers of the 21st century."

Primary future trends are projected and leading research
opportunities identified. Some interesting subsidiary future trends
also emerge: systems analysts in-house providing requirement for
outsourced development, a natural evolution toward "a significant
increase in telecommuting," consulting as a career path for
aspiring CIOs, the importance of the transition from
individual-based IT work to team-based work and mindset, the need
for both a CTO and CIO as complementary functions. Reich and
Nelson's in-depth view of the evolution of the CIO role and the IT
function should help academic research to "lead practice rather
than follow it."