Making Digital Innovation Happen: A Chief Information Officer Issue Selling Perspective

Despite the large amount of touted benefits of digital innovation to contemporary firms, scholarly attention to how digital innovation may take place within an organization is surprisingly limited. Drawing upon issue selling theory, this study examines how chief information officers (CIOs) could lead their organizations' digital innovation initiatives. We propose that the CIO's issue selling effectiveness, rather than his or her structural position, directly influences the level of organizational digital innovation success. Furthermore, the CIO's structural power should not be overlooked because it could amplify (i.e., positively moderate) the impact of CIO issue selling to digital innovation outcomes. In addition, we identify four enabling forces of CIO issue selling effectiveness: (1) CIO strategic decision making authority, (2) CIO/top management team partnership, (3) CIO information technologies (IT)-related strategic knowledge, and (4) CIO political savvy. Matched-pair survey data collected from senior business and IT executives of 179 organizations largely support the research hypotheses. The findings of the study suggest that issue selling perspective offers a powerful theoretical lens to examine CIO strategic impacts in the digital era.