قابلیت مدیریتIT و تاثیر آن بر عملکرد یک CIO

Viewed from the perspective of the activity competency model (ACM) and prior theoretical works, we developed a conceptual framework for investigating the capability of IT management personnel and its impact on the performance of a CIO. A scale for measuring a CIO's effectiveness and management capability was developed and validated. A partial least squares method was used to test the conceptual model empirically and hypotheses were tested through data collected in a large-scale survey. The results supported the proposed framework, and confirmed our hypotheses that both IT and managerial competencies have positive significant impact on the effectiveness of a CIO. We also found that his or her IT management capability significantly impacted the CIO's performance. Our findings are likely to be of particular value to those concerned with IT management training and competency development for CIOs.

Today's ITs are ubiquitous and prevalent across a variety of business enterprise functions and processes. The integration of IT and IS with business operations has been widely recognized as a requirement in creating business values, seed new market opportunities, facilitating process innovation, and helping to shape business vision and strategy in order to gain competitive advantages for an organization [21]. The need for cooperation between IT and business managers involves agreement in the way that they share the risks, responsibilities, and decision right of strategic IT applications. Without this, the distribution of responsibility and accountability among the IT and business units of the firm is unlikely to be effective in acquiring, deploying, and leveraging its IT resources effectively. Although many small and medium firms have aligned technology applications with business operations, few have successfully integrated their IT and business units these applications with their business, and still less have made sure that their technology and business leadership operate in concert for both the strategic and tactical modes. Understanding how to align, synchronize, and converge the spaces of business and IT is thus becoming a critical issue confronting senior IT executives in modern firms. As high level IT leaders in large organizations, CIOs act as business innovators and catalysts for change. They must alert their business counterparts to potential opportunities resulting from new emerging IT methods and help to persuade them to become business innovation champions, while agreeing for a need for extra resources for new IT initiatives [18]. A capable CIO must therefore not only be an effective IT leader, but also be a first class intermediary between the IT and business/sectors of the organization. CIOs should be good at prioritizing IT initiatives, building IT-related business strategies, and helping their business peers in understanding the need for IT investments, helping prioritize business requirements, and ensuring effective use of critical IT assets, probably in coordination with the CTO. As such, the technical-business orientation must ensure interfacing of the IT units with all other departments of the organization. This poses unique challenges and opportunities for CIOs. Hence, modern CIOs need to have a broad understanding of both IT governance and business practices, as well as possess the related competencies. A CIO is one of the toughest professional level positions in the firm today: at the same level in governmental and commercial organizations as vice presidents and other top management team (TMT) members, such as the CEO, COO, CFO, but having a rather rapid turnover rate [10]. This may result in some IT executives having a good understanding of business in general, but not of the distinguishing details of the specific business that they serve. In fact, the majority of today's CIOs still lack broad business understanding, strategic vision, and the interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company, or play a bigger role in running it. CIOs are key agents in championing the use of the entire spectrum of IT methods in order to ensure that business applications deliver high ROI. Today's CIOs are expected to help integrate IT functions with business operations to construct appropriate organizational structures, processes, and human skills to exploit IT as a strategic differentiator. Many researchers and committees have proposed the set of basic skills and management practices needed by CIOs in aligning, synchronizing, and converging technology and business management, and in helping them work with other VPs in shaping business goals. However, the impact of these capabilities on CIO role performance has not been investigated [12]. Indeed, even though IT is often considered a driver of change within human resources (HR), few studies have addressed the relationship between IT and CIOs’ HR-based capabilities, role performance, and IT management effectiveness. Prior research on overall CIO effectiveness has generally recorded the factors that are associated with high-performance CIOs, without measuring their effectiveness. Other studies have used some readily measurable constructs, such as the extent of IT use and of IT deployment as barometers of the CIOs’ IT management activity effectiveness. However, deploying IT is often not enough to make the CEO and other TMT members view the CIO as effective in their firm. To be perceived as with high-performance in their roles, CIOs need to perform the related IT management activities. We therefore first define IT management activity effectiveness as the degree to which a CIO can apply well-defined processes, appropriate organizational structures, information, and supporting technologies to drive organizations closer to the goal of business and technology unification. Researchers have exerted very little attention to investigating the causal relationships among CIOs’ skills/knowledge (competencies), activity effectiveness, and role performance. Prior research has not addressed the key issues of competency development with respect to the nature of IT management capability and its influence on CIO role performance. The purpose of our research was, therefore, to address two research questions: (1) What are the areas of knowledge/skills that characterize CIOs’ IT management capability for information technology management? (2) What is the contribution of CIOs’ IT management capability for information technology management towards improving their role performance?

We proposed a framework of IT management capability and developed a comprehensive model, based on ACM, empowerment theory, and role-based performance theory, for examining the causal relationships between IT and management competencies, IT management activity effectiveness, and CIO role performance, This model was validated through a rigorous PLS analysis. The nomological structure of IT management capability, encompassing IT competency, management competency, and IT management activity, was validated by the empirical data. All the components of IT management capability are found to contribute to CIO role performance. Specifically, the testing results indicated that CIOs’ superior IT and management competencies positively associated with IT management effectiveness. Furthermore, a higher level of IT management effectiveness also directly affected the CIO's role performance. All of the six broad domains of skills/knowledge (IT infrastructure, business applications, and business–technology integration of IT competency, business domain knowledge, interpersonal, and business management practices of management competency) significantly affected IT management activity effectiveness and CIO role performance. CIOs have a key role to play as catalysts for innovation and enablers of change. Our analysis implies that modern CIOs should not only count on their IT skills/knowledge but also equip themselves with specific business management competency. Hence, modern CIOs should equip themselves with adequate IT proficiency in recognizing potential ways to exploit new business opportunities using IT infrastructure, analyze organizational problems in order to identify business applications, and evaluate the way emerging IS/IT contributes to the value co-creation of IT–business integration. In addition, today's CIOs need interpersonal skills, in order to converge help initiate IT-based business innovation.