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Abstract The dominant interpretation of the function and role of the CIO is technology-related with business-ICT alignment as a core concept. We criticize this vision as a product of the dominant interpretive scheme and show how the logic of this scheme restricts the worldview of CIO's and researchers. To overcome these restrictions, we adopt an alternative interpretive scheme based on our twenty years of experience with collaboration with information managers. This scheme is essentially generative and synthetic. We define the function and role of the CIO as the orchestrator of the information-related activities of the organization. To be successful, the CIO should further maintain equilibrium between inspiring and innovating the organization and informing and architecturing it. Finally, we argue for the use of a new language that can involve all stakeholders in these activities to make them enthusiastic participants. Based on this new view, the CIO can emanate information leadership. Keywords: CIO, Equilibrist, Information Leadership, Information Management, Informing, Inspiring, Orchestrator, Strategic Alignment Maes and De Vries, Information Leadership: the CIO as Orchestrator and Equilibrist Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008 3 CIO Problems and Prospects 4 Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008 Information Leadership: the CIO as Orchestrator and Equilibrist The Dominant Interpretation of the CIO Ever since its emergence in the 1970s To put these managerial issues into practice and to arrive at strategic alignment, the CIO is supposed to perform six roles Maes and De Vries, Information Leadership: the CIO as Orchestrator and Equilibrist Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008 5 word, yet. Furthermore, how do we interpret the CIO's job in a world of outsourcing, in which what seems to be generally interpreted as his/her prime responsibility is outsourced to third parties on a large scale? Will CIO's become CHIPOs (CHief ICT Purchasing Officers) or will their careers be over definitively? And how do we proceed with the concept of alignment that over many years has been heavily criticized in the literature? Are CIO's, talking about alignment all day long, not just emphasizing and reinforcing differences? Do people that are categorized by IS people as 'the business' wish to be aligned? Do they know what it means? Is alignment a manifestation of instrumental thinking (aligning ICT strategy to business strategy) or a manifestation of technological determinism and associated power games (ICT impacts on business and therefore business processes should be aligned with The dominant interpretation in the literature is not without problems and if it is an adequate representation of the CIO's practice, this function seems to be in deep trouble. What we intent to offer in this paper is an alternative interpretive scheme of what the job of CIO is all about. We will argue that CIO's are essentially orchestrators and equilibrists. We will work out what they need to orchestrate and between what they are balancing and we will explore an alternative language to shape orchestration and balancing. We will present this in section four of this paper. Our arguments for such an alternative interpretive scheme are a result from our working method and our critique on the dominant interpretive scheme. We present our working method first in the next section because the critique on the dominant interpretive scheme and indeed the whole concept of interpretive scheme is part of our working method. Our critique on the dominant interpretive scheme is set out in section three. This critique is fundamental in the sense that we strongly believe that the dominant interpretation of the CIO's work causes many troubles experienced in practice and precludes both practitioners and researchers from exploring new avenues. Our Working Method Our way of working is interpretive in nature and is therefore quite contrary to the general positivist epistemology in the IS field Interpretists believe that the process of social construction could lead to temporal collective interpretations. It is our interpretation that the dominant interpretation in the literature cited above is that the CIO is responsible for IS/ICT related management issues (and in many cases for the IS/ICT department of the organization) and that business-ICT alignment should be strived for to be effective as a business partner. This collective interpretation works as an axiom. It has been taken for granted right from the start. This is despite the fact that Synott (1987), in one of the first definitions of the CIO, did not define the CIO explicitly in technological terms, he saw the CIO as "a senior executive responsible for establishing corporate information policy, standards, and management control over CIO Problems and Prospects The problem with this dominant scheme is that the scheme gets reinforced by itself all the time. Both practitioners and academics work from the same axioms. They have learned the dominant scheme throughout their education and have been indoctrinated with it. This reinforcement effect is especially strong in the case of dominant perspectives on leadership roles. It is well known from the management literature that top managers have themselves become the system in which they have grown to their positions. Therefore, they don't have many incentives to change that system. Moreover their roles are not only shaped by themselves but by the expectations of their surroundings as well. If there is truth in the understanding of social psychologists that our social environment shapes our identity, it would mean that the identity of CIO's is shaped by the interpretive schemes of the people surrounding them, like suppliers, consultants, employees, fellow CIO's and academics. As they all share the dominant scheme and express their mutual expectations in the dominant language, they will reinforce that scheme. Of course CIO's will meet many people from other disciplines who don't share this dominant scheme but also that has been taken care of in the dominant interpretive scheme…indeed, by the concept of business-ICT alignment. The argument we make is a structuration argument taken from Giddens' structuration theory (Giddens 1976). Giddens holds that individual human agency and abstract social structure (traditions, institutions, codes, established ways of doing, language, etc) are related to each other. Social structure is produced and reproduced by individual agents repeating acts. These acts are repeated because of the social structure in the sense that the social structure has formed individual's beliefs and language and that actions which are deviant from the social structure are reacted on by other people within the same social structure with disbelief and sometimes even anger. Social structure thus serves as a save haven. This recursive relationship between human agency and social structure is called the duality of structure. Crucial in Giddens' theory is that that same relationship means that social structures can be changed. To do so people need to get aware of the dominant social pattern and need to replace it or reproduce it differently. Interpretive schemes are central in such change. Interpretive schemes are the means through which meaning is communicated in human interaction CIO Problems and Prospects Our alternative interpretive scheme has been formed in a social structure which only has been moderately influenced by the traditional dominant interpretive scheme, which has been influenced by interpretations schemes from other disciplines as well and in which we have been actively involved for over twenty years. As knowledge is path dependent, our knowledge results from the many interpretations of events, trends and interactions that we experienced throughout our professional journey. Where did our journey start? It started twenty years ago with a one year educational program for executives who were responsible for ICT related issues in businesses or governmental organizations. By that time the word CIO had just been introduced, academics and practitioners alike were debating its positioning and role taking and expectations were high. The first jokes on careers had to be made yet and the concept of alignment had not yet been introduced. The first papers on the strategic impact of information systems began to see the light and James Martin amongst others just had introduced the concept of strategic IS planning. Our program started from the notion of strategic IS planning, strategic impact and the idea that within a couple of years large Dutch companies would need someone in some sort of CIO position. We believed that such a person would need knowledge on strategy, organizational design and behavior and ICT. This educational program was targeted towards people in IT departments and business people. The program was called Information Management to emphasize that it was more than an IS program. The start of the program was quite participatory. We defined problems in the field together with our participants and sought for solutions and experts together with them. This way we built a network of lecturers right from the start. They were a mix of academics with insight in practitioners' problems and reflective practitioners. Retrospectively, this could be denoted as our root definition The appreciation of generative synthesis by practitioners asks for rather holistic frameworks (like the one in It is this way of working that we have in mind in this paper. Because we have to deal with a quite pronounced dominant scheme of interpretation of the CIO's working field and role taking which gets expressed in a seemingly hard to change language that reinforces the dominant scheme, we need to be somewhat provocative in our approach. As we have to deal with a multi-disciplinary field of working in practice and the nomenclature of our own field reinforces the dominant scheme, we 'borrow' meaning and language from other fields like architecture, design, organizational behavior, etc. We like to emphasize that we do not mean ICT-architecture, systems design or behavioral issues like resistance to systems because we hardly believe that that has anything to do with what non-IS people (we mean the rest of the world) think of when they talk about informational issues. As we, at the same time, have to deal with interpretative schemes of the work of practitioners, our approach has been practitioner oriented and participatory in the first place for over twenty years and we remain to do so. We are fully aware of the fact that dominant schemes have their origins in education which is in many cases based on academic research. However, as has been put forward earlier, we do not expect traditional empirical research to bring us closer to alternative schemes. This stance is in line with the one adopted by Ciborra who heavily criticizes detached academic practice for the benefit of research "anchored to the unfolding of the human process of encountering the everyday world" (Ciborra 2002: 6). Moreover, the academic field itself has expressed that most new issues in the IS field has been brought in by practitioners and consultants Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the IS field is one of the primary reference fields that we work from. Therefore, we share our concerns, approach and alternative interpretations on conferences like the International Conference on Information Systems and hope to be of inspiration. Problems with the Dominant Interpretive Scheme Denial of the Concept of Information Our first and foremost objection against the prevailing conceptualization of the CIO is the almost complete absence of the concept of information. The usage of notions such as business-ICT alignment, ICT strategy, architecture and sourcing has led to the idea that the management of ICT has become almost synonymous with the management of information. "In short, the 'T' of IT has become the focus of attention rather than the 'I'." Now that ICT is increasingly outsourced, the lack of information related notions and the over-emphasis on technological notions become apparent. The resulting situation is a challenging one. Now that technology no longer distracts our attention from the real issue, we can return to that issue and consider the information itself as an important variable for analysis (Glazer 1991). We can shift our attention from the means to the ends. We should however be careful in this endeavor. The heritage of the past two to three decades of technology oriented thinking has left us with a 'cabinet full of mechanical information notions' like for instance information logistical notions, such as the gathering, storage, refinement, and distribution of information or concepts like information users and producers, information requirements or senders and receivers. The problem with this cabinet is that these notions are still technology related and systems oriented. Another way of thinking about information that will be rather tempting in an environment of ICT outsourcing would be market related notions like information demand and supply. However, such market terminology commoditizes the concept of information, such that it degenerates into a marketable product (Huizing 2007a) and will distract our attention to the medium of commodity distribution (the technology) once again. With such a set of notions, CIO's would be caught in a vicious circle from technology trap to commodity trap and back again. With such set of notions, they will only 'shed' their image of technologists, as some ICT representatives appear to do (Booth and Philip 2005). Another set of notions, which has always been around in the working field of the CIO, is that of accounting, accounting information systems and financial information systems. It is obvious that the information related concepts in this field belong to the core competencies of another profession and that these concepts address only (a biased) part of the information related issues. To state it in a provocative way: information management is broader than management information. Adhering to these notions further puts the CIO back in the position of the responsible for IT. What we need is a genuine interest to develop management notions around the function of information in social CIO Problems and Prospects Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008 These notions should be on processes of communication, interaction and learning, on how people understand and attach meaning in social processes. We need to acknowledge fully that at this moment in time only a fraction of information (and probably only the fraction of commoditizable data) can be caught in systems and that a systems orientation restricts our view on how information is dealt with by people in their social (inter)action. Understanding how people deal with information is not a means to arrive at systems but systems are a means to support people's dealing with information. We should keep in mind that there are many information and knowledge related processes that cannot be designed, but should be designed for (Wenger 1998). A set of information notions like these complements competencies on technological commodities, which are rather easy to duplicate, with socio-organizational competencies. Resource configurations consisting of a profoundly intertwined combination of socio-organizational competencies and technological systems which are infused with social values during development, implementation and usage and as a consequence bear the values of the social organization, could become complex, tacit, specific and opaque and are therefore hard to duplicate (Barney 1999). These are of high value to the organization. CIO's that orchestrate the development of such configurations from their information-related and technological systems related notions do not only support their organizations but have become part of such valuable socio-organizational configuration. As long as we conceptualize the CIO as a senior manager, responsible for IS/ICT related issues, our attention and that of those we educate will be distracted by the technology, which becomes increasingly commoditized. Furthermore, we would be tempted to further develop a language full of systems and technology-related concepts. A language that is probably highly creative but ineffective in our communication with others. For those who need examples, think about virtual reality, artificial intelligence, ambient mobility, enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management. The list could be endless. The danger of such language does not lie in the fact that others do not understand it (it could be explained), but in the fact that others understand it very well. Those who understand terms like customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning very well recognize the mechanical nature of the language and view this as a reflection of the way of thinking of the speaker. The identification of the CIO with technology related issues could lead to an endless cycle. Those who hold themselves primarily responsible for technological issues will be regarded that way and as a consequence will be asked questions about it. As they feel responsible for these technological issues, they need to speak technology-related language in response to these questions. This reconfirms their technological image. Even when the conversation is not about technology as such but about information, the conversation will be in systems-related language, thus restricting the conversation. The dominant interpretive scheme is both cause and effect. The only way out is to free ourselves from such language through the development of notions that have to do with the ends (information) instead of the means (technology) and which does not reconfirm a mechanical image. Hence, we repeat our statement: the CIO is not a CIO….yet. The Myth of Alignment Romanticism Our second objection against the dominant interpretive scheme of the CIO targets the concept of strategic alignment. In this notion, the CIO is seen as a sort of liaison officer between business and ICT, in academic terms between the management discipline and information systems, if not computer science. The image of the business-ICT relationship has been that of "a troubled marriage in need of guidance" (Ward and Peppard 1996). Maes CIO Problems and Prospects Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008 Taken from a linguistic perspective one could say that openly speaking of alignment and the strive for it, resembles speaking openly about the strive for a good marriage. Both emphasize what is missing and give the other party a feeling of impotence. The adding of the predicate 'strategic' does not ease those feelings because it stresses importance. Obviously, expressing oneself in dichotomies confirms differences (Barad 2003). The concept of strategic business-ICT alignment is highly romantic in nature altogether. Everything to strive for seems beautiful, appeals to general cultural values and above all might solve a problem that at least is experienced by one of the parties. However, the road leading to it is unclear, as are the benefits once reaching it. As we encounter many people along the road which seem not be aligned yet, our search for this Holy Grail is harmful in the sense that we confirm socio-organizational differences and shape distances. In those cases where strategic alignment manifests itself as a traditional top down strategic planning exercise, the concept reinforces the mechanical image of CIO's. We conclude again that the dominant interpretive scheme is both cause and effect. We end our discussion on alignment with the statement that the CIO is not to become a partner in business, but a part of business. In a world of ubiquitous outsourcing, the romantic notion of business-ICT alignment boils down into a contractual relationship and the CIO becomes part of business or otherwise will end up as CHIPO. We repeat that the challenge is to be a genuine information officer, a CIO that orchestrates complex resource configurations of socio-organizational competencies and technological systems that are highly valued by the organization and as such be part of this valuable socio-organizational configuration itself. An Alternative Interpretive Scheme: the CIO as Orchestrator and as Equilibrist The CIO as Orchestrator Maes Therefore, it makes the connecting factors information/communication and structure explicit as central components of information management, but it deals above all summarily with the suppositions of strategic alignment: (1) the elements of the framework represent essential, integral components of information management, which cannot be understood isolated from each other; in the terms of Barad indicates that these components always need to be considered within their correlation. In this vision, the CIO is the orchestrator, the person that orchestrates the information-related activities of an organization (or part thereof, or across organizational borders) represented in the framework. In this, the components embodied by the middle axles of the framework are his/her main sets of tools. We further elaborate on these central axles, a more comprehensive treatment of the domains of the framework can be found in With the I/C column in the fra