Sources of Power and CIO Influence and Their Impact: An Explorative Survey

The broad purpose of this research is to investigate links among various sources of power available to CIOs and organizational IS strategies, the manner in which IS is perceived by senior executives in the process of strategic decision-making. We conducted a survey of CIOs and preliminary findings suggest that power derived from managing organizational contingencies corresponds to organizations with IS innovator strategy. The initial results suggest we need to further investigate power dynamics in organizations with an in-depth field study, to better understand how CIO can influence top management team members in regards to IS decisions in their organizations.