Cloud Computing Adoption and its Implications for CIO Strategic Focus - An Empirical Analysis

The evolving role of Chief Information Officers (CIO) has been widely recognized in IS literature. Yet the enablers of CIOs to focus on strategic activities towards CIO effectiveness have been understudied from constructs, structures, processes and mechanisms perspective and the evidence is largely anecdotal. Cloud computing technologies are gaining adoption and anecdotal evidence suggests that these technologies may allow CIOs to focus more on strategic activities. Drawing on IS literature and on the Attention Based View of the firm from Organizations literature, we posit that cloud computing can enable CIOs to focus on strategic activities and organizational complementarities augment the impact. Our large dataset of US firms provides conclusions beyond single instances and largely supports our propositions. We find that cloud computing can in fact enable CIO strategic focus and complementarities in process and systems capabilities and organizational learning maximize the value.