CIO Leadership Characteristics and Styles

Although studies targeting CIO’s leadership characteristics are numerous, studies examining CIOs’ leadership styles are scarce. Today’s CIOs are often members of the firm’s C-level executive team with a wide range of leadership capabilities and characteristics that are not much different from those of the CEOs. What, then, are the characteristics and leadership styles for those CIOs? This literature review study attempts to answer those two questions by examining prior research on these topics. First, we examine prior literature identifying all studied characteristics and then, propose four categories to group them into meaningful sets. Second, we identify what leadership styles are used by researchers. And while the general leadership field has been evolving over the past twenty years shifting its focus and introducing new leadership styles, CIOs' leadership research is still entrapped in the old school of thinking. Consequently, we intend to stimulate new thinking about studying CIOs’ characteristics and styles.