Who’s who in the zoo? Clarifying the difference between the chief digital officer and chief information officer

South African Journal of Information Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Who’s who in the zoo? Clarifying the difference between the chief digital officer and chief information officer
 
Creator van Niekerk, Theunis Marnewick, Carl
 
Subject Information Systems chief digital officer; chief information officer; roles and responsibilities; digital transformation; digital strategy; IT strategy.
Description Background: The new chief digital officer (CDO) role within top management is shrouded with confusion and ambiguity.Objectives: The purpose of this study is to identify the differences between the traditional chief information officer (CIO) and more modern CDO role.Method: Being grounded within the paradigm of interpretivism, this study follows a qualitative research approach and adopts a narrative research strategy. This study explores the opinions of top management relating to both CIO and CDO roles through conducting in-depth interviews with open-ended questions. Insights into the data are gained through an analytical process of thematic content analysis.Results: This study shows that distinctions are emerging between the roles and responsibilities of the CDO and CIO roles within companies. Even though both roles are strategic, the CDO is responsible for digital strategy, while the CIO is responsible for the information technology (IT) strategy.Conclusion: This study illustrates that IT is becoming central to a company’s business model and this focus change requires specific skills and competencies within the company. Furthermore, the study shows that differences exist between the CIO and CDO roles within a company.Contribution: This study highlights key differences between the roles and responsibilities of the CDO and CIO. This study also identifies key contingency and institutional factors that influence a firm to introduce a CDO and clarifies the concept of digital transformation.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-02-29
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Interviews
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajim.v26i1.1670
 
Source South African Journal of Information Management; Vol 26, No 1 (2024); 11 pages 1560-683X 2078-1865
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1670/2652 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1670/2653 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1670/2654 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1670/2655
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Theunis van Niekerk, Carl Marnewick https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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