Information system (IS) leadership is a critical area for many organizations because of their increasing dependence on ISs both for operational stability and for enablement of process innovation and business strategy. IS Leadership is distinctive from leadership in general because the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is expected to combine IS technical skills with an in-depth understanding of the organization across all functions from operational to strategic. Thus, unique leadership challenges arise due to the technology/business interface. The breadth of the IS Leadership role implies that IS Leadership research needs to cover a wide range of topics concerning the role and characteristics of the CIO, the CIO's interface with the top management team, and the CIO's organizational impact.
Information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) leadership roles have undergone fundamental changes over the past decade. Despite increased interest in recent years, little empirical research on IS/IT leadership roles has been done. The survey collected data on general leadership roles such as informational role, decisional role and interpersonal role, and CSC (1996) has also suggested six new IS leadership roles which are required to execute IS’s future agenda: chief architect, change leader, product developer, technology provocateur, coach and chief operating strategist. The empirical analysis indicates that strategic responsibility as well as network stage of growth influence the extent of informational role, while the extent to which the chief executive uses IT influences the extent of decisional role, and the extent to which subordinates use IT influence the extent of interpersonal role. IS/IT managers with greater operating responsibility will be chief architects. The role of a change leader is positively influenced by the number of years in IT, the extent of IT use, the extent of strategic responsibility and the organization's revenue, while it is negatively influenced by the number of years in the current position. Product developer can be predicted by strategic responsibility and chief executive's IT use, while technology provocateur can be predicted by the extent of IT use, coach can be predicted by the extent of subordinates' IT use, and chief operating strategist can be predicted by the extent of strategic responsibility. Although several significant predictors of IS/IT leadership roles were identified in this research, the search for more significant predictors should continue in future research.
Although these roles were produced by the CSC consultancy firm without any scientific approach, they seem very well tailored for scientific investigation into IS leadership roles. People who fill these roles do not necessarily head up new departments or processes, but they exert influence and provide leadership across the organizational structure.
Different IS Leadership Roles:
1.Chief Architect – The chief architect designs future possibilities for the business. The primary work of the chief architect is to design and evolve the IT infrastructure so that it will expand the range of future possibilities for the business, not define specific business outcomes. The infrastructure should provide not just today’s technical services, such as networking , databases and desktop operating systems, but an increasing range of business-level services, such as workflow, portfolio management, scheduling and specific business components or objects.
2.Change Leader – the change leader orchestrates resources to achieve optimal implementation of the future. The essential role of the change leader is to orchestrate all those resources that will be needed to execute the change program. This includes providing new IT tools, but it also involves putting in place teams of people who can redesign roles, jobs, and workflow, who can change beliefs about the company and the work people do, and who understand human nature and can develop incentive systems to coax people into new and different behaviors.
3.Product Developer – The product developer helps define the company’s place in the emerging digital economy. For example, a product developer might recognize the potential for performing key business processes (perhaps order fulfillment, purchasing or delivering customer support) over electronic linkages such as the Internet. The product developer must “sell” the idea to a business partner and together they can set up and evaluate business experiments, which are initially operated out of IS. Whether the new methods are adopted or not, the company will learn from the experiments and so move closer to commercial success in emerging digital markets.
4.Technology Provocateur – The technology provocateur embeds IT into the business strategy. The technology provocateur works with senior business executives to bring IT and realities of the IT marketplace to bear on the formation of strategy for the business. The technology provocateur is a senior business executive who understands both the business and IT at a deep enough level to integrate the two perspectives in discussions about the future course of the business. Technology provocateurs have a wealth of experience in IS disciplines, so they understand at a fundamental level the capabilities of IT and how IT impacts the business.
5.Coach - The coach teaches people to acquire the skillsets they will need for the future. Coaches have two responsibilities: teaching people how to learn, so that they can become self-sufficient, and providing team leaders with staff able to do the IT-related work of the business. A mechanism that assists both is the center of excellence - a small group of people with a particular competence or skill, with a coach responsible for their growth and development. Coaches are solid practitioners of the competence that they will be coaching, but need not be the best at it in the company.
6.Chief operating strategist - The chief operating strategist invents the future with senior management. The chief operating strategist is the top IS executive who is focused on the future agenda of the IS organization. The strategist has parallel responsibilities related to helping the business design the future, and then delivering it. The most important, and least understood, parts of the role have to do with the interpretation of new technologies and the IT marketplace, and the bringing of this understanding into the development of the digital business strategy for the organization.
Reference:
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2000.926945
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