The Study of CIO Role and Responsibility in Taiwanese Corporation: A Comparative Perspective

Enterprises are all facing a rapidly changing market that global competition is vigorous. It is important for enterprises to win business opportunities by taking advantage of sophistication IT application. The keys for enterprises to growth largely depend on the capacity of using IT appropriately to reduce cost, increase productivity, and enhance innovation and competitiveness. The CEO has been long responsible for management strategy in corporation, as diverse and complex IT applications have developed, the role of CIO, who is in charge of IT related process in an enterprise becomes vital for corporation development. Previous studies are limited in address nation-specific economic and industrial context by identifying differences of roles and responsibilities of CIO across nations. This study employs secondary data analysis to compare the roles and responsibilities of CIO in enterprises across the US, Japan and Taiwan respectively to shed the lights of comparative CIO studies from national economic respective. The results suggest while more transformational leader and business strategist role of CIO is found in the US corporation, Taiwanese CIOs are more likely to characterize as the function head and recently transformational leader that primarily focused on activities that aims at achieving IT operational excellence and on creating change for their enterprise through close partnerships with business operations. The role of CIOs in Japan is shifting toward the US model that emphasizes leadership and managerial responsibilities as top priorities. In all, this paper suggests economic and industrial aspects of global economy should be taken into account in the CIO related studies to understand the change and development of CIO job models and typology.