Who is in charge of digital transformation? The birth and rise of the chief digital officer

Abstract

With the increasing pressure for organizations to digitalize, many companies are complementing their top management teams (TMT) with new members, chief informational and digital officers (CIOs and CDOs). As members of top management teams, CIOs and CDOs are expected to fulfill essential roles in the digital transformation strategy and its implementation. By making decisions on digitalization, they also influence business model development, innovation, and business strategy. While research on digital transformation is growing steadily, we lack a coherent understanding of the extent and nature of these top management roles and their relationships and the specific tasks involved. Based on the literature on management, information systems, and related fields, this paper discusses the evolving CIO and CDO roles and their interrelationships. Our key contribution is to conceptualize the role split, the emergence of the CDO, the nature of organizational roles and relationships by drawing on concepts of organizational ambidexterity, transactive memory systems (TMS), and shared understanding. We find that despite the separation of roles and potentially overlapping responsibilities, a collaborative relationship can be beneficial due to the complementary nature of the roles particularly to drive the digital transformation. We conclude with a future research agenda."