IT Leadership - Research Paper Example

 The CIO role in any business organization is as important as it’s IS. Some of the CIOs in different business organization have switched to business strategies roles as well as assuming process innovators positions. This has left the CIO’s to change from being service providers to become executive-level leader (Chun and Mooney, 2009). In the recent years, CIOs in most business organizations are deeply involved in helping CEOs in their strategies as well as other leaders in different business units in their strategies implementation. Despite taking on these new responsibilities, the CIOs are still expected to observe their traditional role when it comes to technology-centric. This implies that they are still charged with the responsibility of leveraging the technology infrastructure existing within the business organization with an aim of reducing costs. This change in roles has gone through several processes since time in history from the CIOs original responsibility of managing data processes, to technology management, and then later moved to being executive IT dealings. The CIOs who came after this period were expected to focus more on the imperatives of the business, to manage relationships in IS executive, have the value of IT communicated, and to oversee IS development(Chun and Mooney, 2009). The recent years are still experiencing mixed feelings on the specific roles of CIOs. Some of the roles commonly taken by CIOs in the last 25 years include; strategic IT development thinking, regarded as chief officers of technology as they play a key role in infrastructure planning, architecture planning and other operational responsibilities, they also come up with new regulations and laws, play a significant role in IT outsourcing growth and serve primarily as IT managers. According to the Chun and Mooney’s article of 2009, the CIO position was used in the 1990’s to show a new IS executive type that had been elevated from its original position within the firms. The new CIOs were elevated to assuming both a business and technical manager role from their traditional technical manager role. This new role was meant to generate information that was value-added within the firm. The article explains the changes that have been observed in the role played by the CIOs in the 2000s within business organizations. Despite the better positions and more power given to the CIOs, the article argues that the CIOs have failed to offer the expected value to their respective business organizations thus have been rendered obsolete (Chun and Mooney, 2009). This allegation is mostly related to the use of IT is their strategies. However, there are those who still believe that the traditional role assumed by the CIO has experienced a remarkable evolution and has since become responsible for offering IT capabilities and infrastructure with the aim of ensuring that the business operations are effectively run. This means that in the last 25 years, the CIO’s role has been transformed into being more strategic thus provoking and initiating firms and businesses to settle for new strategies and processes with the use of IT. The article further explains that this has not been an easy task for the modern CIOs thus they have been forced to adapt new skills in both business and technical fields. This is because they are now expected to oversee key issues on technology such as budget allocation and technical spending, capabilities development and IT architecture, relationship building, delivering value in security, building relationship, governance and managing shareholders among other important business issues. The article goes further to won that despite the many defined roles of CIOs, more information is needed to offer guidance on their responsibilities and roles. It goes further to suggest that there are several literature bodies that can be used to provide information about CIO’s skill-sets. The article raises an alarm on the existing gap between the available information and the CIO roles which continue to evolve in relation to different scopes of different firms and the attributes of the CIOs that may end up being appropriate for IS environments that are different. The Chun and Mooney’s 2009 article thus presents the role of the CIOs from the early 80’s when they were basically technicians, mentions the transformation that took place in the 90’s that lead to changes in the way they were viewed as they were at that period regarded as innovators with some slowly being introduced to being executives at the top levels within the firms and given the responsibility of managing technology so as to offer value to the business organizations. The article is out to explain the varying roles assumed by CIOs in the last 25 years from one firm to another as in some business the CIOs are the executive level managers while in others they remain the main innovations officers. Despite the evolution, the article insists that the current roles and responsibilities of CIOs are basically the tradition roles of the CIOs as they still have to manage and maintain the existing business legacy when it comes to IS initiatives to check on costs and infrastructure. In order to perform their roles, the CIOs are expected to have skill-sets that are technical and be responsible for the supply and demand side of the management of the IS. The article concludes stating that the CIOs ability to change and the evolution of their role is majorly dependent on the standardization extent of any firm as well as its ability to integrate the available IS infrastructure and the level at which IT remains core to the service, operations, products or competitive positioning of any business. The ‘Real Business of IT Text’ article on the other hand focuses on CIOs who are non-IT. The article states that such CIOs have left IT issues to the IT executives. According to this article, IT plays a significant role in the delivery of organization goals and valued communication (Westerman and Hunter, 2007). Most of the CIOs in the last 25 years have had their focus transformed to direct their strategies towards IT communication both outside and inside IT. The IT side has been observed to change the firms’ performances in terms of transforming their costs and service quality yet some CIOs still hold on to the non-IT side. Departments that are managed by CIOs who are IT oriented have been observed to perform better as a result of their utilization of current technology as compared to those run by CIOs who are non-IT. This has resulted in business organizations communicating and achieving IT values. Thus the article is out to show that despite this reality, some of the CIOs in the last 25 years are not IT oriented. IT plays a significant role in any business organization through value trap avoidance, providence of value for the organization’s money, improving the performance of the business and provides organizations with more value in addition to those directly associated with IT. This article thus discourages the non-IT CIOs in any department or organization as it insists that for any firm to be successful, it has to embrace the value associated with IT. CIOs who are interested in IT avoid traps related to value, they continuously increase the perception of the executive team and take part in value delivered by applying IT (Westerman and Hunter, 2007). References Chun, M. & Mooney, J. (2009). “CIO roles and responsibilities: Twenty-five years of evolution and change”. Information & Management. Westerman, G & Hunter, R. (2007). Real Business of IT Text. New York: Harvard Business Press References Abhilasha, B. et el. (2007). ‘Privacy preserving multi-factor authentication with biometrics.’ Journal of Computer Security, Vol. 15, 529-560 Patterson, D. (2005). “The state of funding for new initiatives in Computer Science and Engineering.” Communication of The ACM, Vol. 40 No. 4 Read More