THE EVER-CHANGING CIO PROFESSION How the endless battle of jurisdictional control determined the past, affects the present and is shaping the future.

Abstract

From that of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) profession’s creation in the early 80’s, organisations have struggled with the question of how to utilise Information Technology (IT) as a tool for competitive advantage. Since then, companies have come and gone – but the CIO has remained. During this time the CIO, also known as the head of IT, has faced constant adversity. Everything from having to fight for certain tasks, to having its entire existence questioned. Distrust, unachievable expectations, and political actions from other professions is only a handful of reasons why the CIO has faced a high turnover rate. Other factors have been their lacking business knowledge, the profession’s ambiguity and organisations perception of IT that has not aligned with the CIOs. Unlike before, more specialised professions such as the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is an emerging challenger, waiting for the CIO to be substituted. The purpose of this study is to investigate the CIO profession’s evolutionary processes, from its origin until today, to understand the profession’s future. To do this, a literature review has been conducted and the CIO profession’s past was divided into two segments, before and after the millennial shift. 19 interviews were done with CIOs to understand its present state and the respondents’ perceptions of the profession’s future. The data was analysed through Andrew Abbotts (1988) framework The System of Professions, which treats how a profession fights for jurisdictions in a larger system of professions. Four categories (System properties, Cognitive strategies, Abstraction and Maintain jurisdictional control) with underlying mechanisms were used to analyse the evolutionary process of the CIO profession and to investigate the profession’s future jurisdictions. This study shows that the CIO profession has undergone major changes. This has increased their influence as they have moved from being seen as a technician to a member of the top management team. However, this study shows that this trend will change in the future. Based upon the ambiguity of the profession, the two identified professions within the same title, the lack of professions identity and as more specialised profession are emerging, we see that the CIO’s future may not be that bright after all.