This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Today's vast array of Web applications for supply chain integration, sales force automation, work group collaboration, and the sale of everything from equities to automobiles makes it perfectly clear that information technology has evolved beyond the role of mere infrastructure supporting business strategy. In more and more industries today, IT is the business strategy. Unfortunately, many CEOs are ill-equipped to manage effectively in the Information Age. The problem has less to do with IT literacy than with a range of behaviors and attitudes that cause such CEOs to shirk their IT responsibilities. By their actions, many CEOs send negative signals about IT's role to other leaders in their organization, who then repeat the behavior. Companies with such leaders frequently fail to reap business advantage from information technology. The authors describe seven types of CEOs and their behaviors and attitudes toward IT and explain why all but one are decidedly unfit to lead companies in the Information Age. Only the "believer CEO" is ready to play a constructive role in his or her company's use of IT. Believers understand that IT enables strategic advantage and demonstrate such beliefs in their daily actions. Believers are involved in IT decision making and are proactive in addressing IT problems and opportunities. They seek advice from a variety of sources, study the IT strategies of competitors, and set examples for others managers in their company to follow. Using examples, the authors explain how believer CEOs play a critical role in their corporate IT strategies, how they craft IT-savvy organizational cultures, and how these actions benefit their businesses. The authors prescribe a variety of methods for leaders to address their shortcomings and master the techniques of believers.

In a comparative study, authors M. Bensaou from INSEAD and Michael Earl from the London Business School found fundamental differences in how Japanese and Western managers think about technology. Too many managers in the West are intimidated by the task of managing technology. They tiptoe around it, supposing that it needs special tools, special strategies, and a special mind-set. Well, it doesn't, the authors say. Technology should be managed--controlled, even--like any other competitive weapon in a manager's arsenal. The authors came to this conclusion in a surprising way. Having set out to compare Western and Japanese IT-management practices, they were startled to discover that Japanese companies rarely experience the IT problems so common in the United States and Europe. In fact, their senior executives didn't even recognize the problems that the authors described. When they dug deeper into 20 leading companies that the Japanese themselves consider exemplary IT users, they found that the Japanese see IT as just one competitive lever among many. Its purpose, very simply, is to help the organization achieve its operational goals. The authors found five principles of IT management in Japan that, they believe, are not only powerful but also universal. They contrast these principles against the practices commonly found in Western companies. While acknowledging that Japan has its own weaknesses with technology, particularly in white-collar office settings, they nevertheless urge senior managers in the West to consider the solid foundation on which Japanese IT management rests.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Provides an overview of the future role of the IT organization, examining the business and technological changes that effect change in many IT units. The four major process changes in the way firms operate all have a major impact on the IT unit: reengineering operational processes, reengineering support processes, rethinking managerial information flows, and redesigning network processes. A distributed computing environment, new development software methods, capabilities like the Internet and other networks, new entrants in the computer industry, and outsourcing are the technological changes affecting the IT organization. The authors cite eight imperatives in which IT organizations must excel to succeed: achieve two-way strategic alignment; develop effective relationships with line management; deliver and implement new systems; build and manage infrastructure; reskill the IT organization; manage vendor partnerships; build high performance; and redesign and manage the federal IT organization.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Chief information officers have the difficult job of running a function that uses a lot of resources but offers little measurable evidence of its value. To make the information systems department an asset to their companies--and to keep their jobs--CIOs should think of their work as adding value in certain key areas. Accordingly, CEOs can take a number of steps to aid a CIO's efforts. Based on studies of information systems leaders in 60 organizations, this article presents a portrait of successful CIOs and the CEOs who support them.