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Study reveals CIO tactics to boost IT-business collaboration

It seems easy to ignore how your workplace's information technology system operates—at least until it acts glitchy and interrupts your routine. That's why companies rely on IT specialists to keep the virtual gears spinning in the right direction.

With IT becoming increasingly pivotal to the business world, how can those in leadership roles most effectively balance the differing priorities of IT workers and employees who operate in other areas, such as marketing or finance?

A new study co-authored by Associate Professor Surinder Kahai from Binghamton University, State University of New York's School of Management offers a promising solution by focusing on the role of a company's chief information officer (CIO). Researchers have found that if a CIO boosts collaboration between IT and business staff so they better understand each other's domains, they can more effectively align IT with overall business objectives.

The paper is in the ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems.

"People tend to work within their own silos, seeing problems in their own areas as more critical. A smart CIO recognizes that you have to set up mechanisms for business people to better understand IT and for the IT staff to better understand aspects of business," Kahai said. "What we found was that if you're setting up ways by which people can learn about the other areas, then it can help foster self-sufficiency, so you can have alignment."

Kahai and fellow researchers reached their conclusions after examining data from 68 different organizations sampled from a commercial IT executive database. They noted how past studies have suggested ways CIOs could promote alignment but didn't address the leadership behaviors CIOs should display and where to focus them on ensuring success.

In today's highly digitized organizations, inspiring others and encouraging collaboration are essential leadership skills for CIOs, Kahai and fellow researchers noted.

According to the study, CIOs can be most effective when they engage in a combination of transformational leadership behaviors (a management style that motivates people to achieve a shared vision) and transactional leadership behaviors (where leaders rely on rewards or punishments to achieve optimal job performance).

"These leadership styles do not compensate for each other—high levels of both are needed to empower and reinforce action from others that facilitate IT-business alignment. A CIO could take a purely tactical approach to integration and alignment by implementing explicit goals and conducting objective-based performance appraisals," the study noted. "But a more effective strategy would be to combine the tactical approach with a cohesive approach which includes inspiring all involved."

The study also noted that IT and business employees should retain their domain-specific knowledge while sharing enough common knowledge to help drive their organizations to alignment.

"This study fills a pretty important gap, because in the past, people haven't paid much attention to the connection between leadership and IT alignment, even though it intuitively makes a lot of sense," Kahai said. "One of the reasons why there hasn't been much progress on addressing the alignment issue is that it requires change. Someone has to drive that change, so we figured it had to be about leadership. You can't always leave it to company employees to bring about the change by themselves."

Mike Taein Eom from the University of Portland and Alper Yayla from the University of Tampa also authored the study, titled "The Effect of Ambidextrous CIO Leadership on Strategic Alignment Through Knowledge Integration Mechanisms."