My research focus is on evaluating leadership style as expressed by IT professionals and IT consultants in moving organisations through significant IT-related change. It appears that a specific style of leadership is required to successfully master significant change. Introduction Private and public sector organisations are undergoing significant restructuring in response to increased competition and accountability. This is due to growing reliance on IT in all aspects of organisational work, increased awareness of the potential for IT to facilitate reengineering of business processes, as well as the rapid rate of change in the technology itself. Managing this IT-related change is difficult, and though most organisations are increasingly dependent on operational and strategic information systems, corporate satisfaction with the IT function is low.
Significant change requires special leadership capabilities of the change agent.
These issues and concerns have led many organisations to seek external assistance from IT and Management Consultancy firms and Outsourcers, in order to better manage and improve their IT investment. This prior research did not seek to link observations made to recognised models of leadership. They also present evidence that such leadership behaviours can be taught and that a specific set of experiences must occur for such leadership behaviours to be successfully expressed. As consultants and IT managers move organisations through IT innovations, we might expect similar results amongst these groups. A premise of this study is that organisations need good and appropriate Information Technology leadership in times of change.