Shaping innovation outcomes: The role of CIOs for firms’ digital exploration
研究首席信息官的职业多样性和任职时长如何影响企业探索数字技术的程度，发现两者分别呈U形和倒U形关系，对理解CIO的战略角色有帮助。
Digital technologies have rapidly pervaded firms, industries, and economic networks. This development has raised expectations that a firm’s chief information officer (CIO) will take a more strategic role, including innovation leadership and digital exploration. In this study, we argue from an upper echelons perspective that CIOs’ career variety and role tenure are critical in shaping the extent to which firms explore digital technologies in their patent portfolio, that is, digital exploration. We expect a U-shaped relationship between CIO career variety and digital exploration, and an inverted U-shaped relationship between CIO role tenure and digital exploration. We test our conceptual model using a cross-industry panel of U.S. firms. As predicted, the results show high digital exploration for low and high career variety, and low digital exploration for moderate career variety, that is, a U-shape. Conversely, they show low digital exploration for low and high role tenure, and high digital exploration for moderate role tenure, that is, an inverted U-shape. These insights indicate that CIOs do become strategic leaders in exploring and shaping digital innovation.