To understand or to be understood? A dyadic analysis of perceptual congruence and interdependence between CEOs and CIOs

Despite the importance of a healthy relationship between CEOs and CIOs in organizations for effective business-IT alignment, there is still little understanding about how different facets of perceptual congruence compare between CEOs and CIOs and how perceptual interdependencies affect the quality of collaboration in these relationships. Drawing on social and personal relationship theories, our study examines 102 matched-pair survey responses of CEOs and CIOs using dyadic data analysis. Our findings show that both executives’ actual opinions on important business and IT topics are more similar than both perceive them to be. Accordingly, perceptions of each other’s attitudes are negatively biased away from their real attitudes. Moreover, our study demonstrates that CIOs’ understanding of their CEO plays a pivotal role in predicting the quality of CEO-CIO collaboration, shedding light on the disparate importance of the two directions of interpersonal understanding for the business-IT partnership. Implications for research and practice are discussed.