The Evolution Of The CIO Leadership

Information has always been important in business enterprises, but with recent technological developments, the role and value of information and technology has changed significantly and continue to influence investment and enterprise operations, decisions and future. The role in charge of influence the governance of this complex system within the firm, with its technical competencies and knowledge, is the CIO. The role of CIO has experienced a deep evolution from the middle to the highest organizational level, up till entering in the C-level executives. This implies has to develop not only technical skills but a new managerial and leadership style, trying to balance the two components of his figure. This work collects some relevant literature contributions and tries to discover the main relationships between four leadership styles and some IT leadership dimensions through a pilot test conducted over 32 CIOs.