The Influence of Demographic Variables on Empirical Studies Concerning Cio Gender

Abstract

Companies are more and more dependent on information technology (IT) and the buzzword digitization is present everywhere. Some companies are inventing new business models based on disruptive innovation supported by information technology. Others adapt these business models as followers. All these new business processes and underlying information technology need to be managed, serviced, and supported by IT organizations to ensure business continuity. Traditionally heads of the IT department have been fully responsible for all aspects of IT usage in the company – including IT cost, IT governance, IT & process planning and implementation and IT operation. This results in the fact that there is a need of more intensive business-IT alignment to ensure the adequacy of the overall IT architecture in a company and ensure the economic value contribution of IT as a whole. In the last two decades researchers have investigated the area of CIO effectiveness by doing empirical research looking at IT roles/tasks, interaction and strategic importance of IT, personal background of CIOs. As a side effect some researchers have constructed and used demographic variables both as control and causal variables. This article looks on the comparability and the source of such demographic data especially on the case of Gender information and highest academic title. It also discusses the question if survey results could be compared with representative datasets to evaluate validity of the sample and responses of empirical studies.