Executive Leadership Lessons & Opportunities for Business Technology Innovation

The purpose of this PhD dissertation study performed throughout 2008-2009 and defended in 2010 was to relate the strength of Chief Information Officer (CIO) transformational leadership behaviors to the computing platform selected for a firm's most critical business application: its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business system. Such computing platforms may be more or less innovative. And over time, once innovative platforms become legacy platforms as they give way to newer, more contemporary, and more capable platforms. Research shows that executive leadership behaviors should affect IT innovation, and CIOs and those in similar leadership positions hold the greatest opportunity to influence such innovation. Yet no research explains the relationship between a CIO's leadership behaviors and the computing platform selected for an organization's most critical business applications. *** This literature gap is important because innovative computing platforms influence a firm's competitiveness, IT cost structure, and most importantly the firm's ability to positively affect its business performance. Research questions explored in this paper asked to what extent transformational leadership theory and its subcomponents (independent variables) predict the selection of more or less innovative OSs (dependent variables). Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and 17 additional items, data representing 151 randomly selected North American CIOs and their ERP computing platforms were studied using a theoretical framework incorporating the influence of executive-level leadership on technology innovation. *** Through analysis of variance, t tests, descriptive statistics, and more (covered in Chapters 3 and 4), the study uncovered significant relationships between the strength of transformational leadership behaviors, particularly Intellectual Stimulation and Inspirational Motivation, and the platform selected for a firm's ERP business system. *** Detailed in Chapter 5, implications for business and social change include a clearer understanding of how specific executive-level leadership behaviors may encourage IT workplace innovation, enable IT teams to more effectively meet changing business needs, increase IT team retention and longevity, improve firm-wide business performance, and much more.