Strategic Directions for AI: The Role of CIOs and Boards of Directors

This paper applies upper echelons theory to investigate whether chief information officers (CIOs) and boards of directors affect the development of AI orientation, which represents firms’ overall strategic direction and goals regarding the introduction and application of artificial intelligence (AI)technology. We tested our model using a dataset drawn from 1,454 publicly listed firms in China. Our findings show that the presence of a CIO positively influences AI orientation and that board educational diversity, R&D experience, and AI experience positively moderate the CIO’s effect on AI orientation. Our post hoc analysis further demonstrates that these board characteristics represent contingencies that impact AI orientation but not conventional IT orientation. This paper contributes to the upper echelons literature and IT management research by offering contextualized arguments that explain new business and IT strategies such as AI orientation. Further, our findings suggest important implications about how to build top management teams and boards capable of effectively developing AI orientations

Hunch Mining

Intuition and hunches are important tools for experts who make time-critical highly complex decisions in turbulent environments. However, hunches are also elusive and exist below the surface when not being used for immediate decision making. These latent hunches are valuable and can lead to creative solutions outside of a crisis. This paper uses a demonstration experiment to show how hunches can be “mined” using revealed causal mapping techniques. Fifty chief information officers and 88 programmer/analysts were interviewed during a very turbulent time in their organizations. The hunch mining results indicate that hunches can be found throughout experts' communications and can serve as valuable insights into strategic and tactical decision making. This research serves as the first manual step in developing natural language processing artificial intelligence tools for automated hunch mining in expert communications.

Innovative Processes in Managing an Enterprise from the Energy and Food Sector in the Era of Industry 4.0

The paper analyzes issues related to production processes in learning organizations using innovative solutions based on the Industry 4.0 paradigm. This study was realized by surveys and observation of companies operating in the energy and food sectors. These are sectors that in recent years have started to intensively implement innovative solutions and are undergoing a transformation towards an intelligent (digital) enterprise, which uses virtual reality, supported by effectively controlling the non-player characters (NPCs). The presented examples can be inspiration for chief executive officer (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs), and chief information officers (CIOs), the people managing companies for investment in innovative solutions. The implementation of Industry 4.0 solutions, as well as new machines design according state-of-the-art achievements of mechanical engineering rules, will allow companies to implement new products, achieve better results (e.g., more products with lower production cost), increase operational efficiency (e.g., lower energy and water consumption), and meet environmental requirements (e.g., reduce CO2 emission, introduce zero-emission energy production).

Cyber Security Solutions for Businesses in Financial Services

This paper examines the challenges that small, medium, and large businesses in the financial services industry are facing concerning data security and providing relevant tools and strategies to protect the same. A qualitative research-based approach has been used where one-on-one interviews were conducted with 10 CIOs (chief information officers) and CISOs (chief information security officers). This data was compared with secondary data sources to validate the findings. This paper presents an in-depth analysis regarding security technologies and their efficacy to protect data assets and sensitive information. It will also opine about the technologies that each business type can use economically to cover the gamut of cyber-attacks. Existing research is restricted to either addressing small and medium businesses (SMBs) or large businesses. This paper attempts a comprehensive review for all sizes of businesses.

ERP On-Premise or On-Demand

This article contends that vendors are now pushing into the small to mid-size organizational markets with simplified, less-risk, less-reward systems while consultants have project experience and have thorough contracts isolating their role. However, SMEs that adopted ERP on-premise solutions before are now facing a dilemma: continuing with ERP on-premise upgrades or switch to on-demand solutions. This article contains data surveyed from Chief Information Officers (CIO) of SMEs with respect to indicators of ERP adoptions. Cost, reduced demand for own IT resources, outage/accessibility and performance were found to be the most critical and important factors to assess ERP adoptions for SMEs.

Chief information officers’ perceptions about artificial intelligence

This article presents a study about artificial intelligence (AI) policy based on the perceptions, expectations, and challenges/opportunities given by chief information officers (CIOs). In general, publications about AI in the public sector relies on experiences, cases, ideas, and results from the private sector. Our study stands out from the need of defining a distinctive approach to AI in the public sector, gathering primary (and comparative) data from different countries, and assessing the key role of CIOs to frame federal/national AI policies and strategies. This article reports three research questions, including three dimensions of analysis: (1) perceptions regarding to the concept of AI in the public sector; (2) expectations about the development of AI in the public sector; and, (3) challenges and opportunities of AI in the public sector. This exploratory study presents the results of a survey administered to federal/national ministerial government CIOs in ministries of Mexico and Spain. Our descriptive statistical (and exploratory) analysis provides an overall approach to our dimensions, exploratory answering the research questions of the study. Our data supports the existence of different governance models and policy priorities in different countries. Also, these results might inform research in this same area and will help senior officials to assess the national AI policies actually in process of design and implementation in different national/federal, regional/state, and local/municipal contexts.

E-learning Model for Competence Development of Chief Information Officers

The objective of this paper is to make an overview and analysis of the role and the challenges that the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are facing and to present an e-learning model for the continuous development of their competences that will allow regular upgrade of their knowledge and skills according to the needs of the organisations. For this purpose, a comparison is made between the public and the private sector about the fundamental principles, key characteristics and competences of CIOs. An e-learning model for the continuous development of the CIOs is proposed based on the ADDIE model that takes into consideration the required competence areas. Keywords: Chief Information Officers (CIOs), e-learning, personalised education, learning management platforms, data-driven education, life-long learning.

Exploring the Effect of Digital Investment on IT Innovation

Using the technology-organization-environment framework, this study examines three antecedents of digital investment as well as the influence of digital investment on IT innovation. The empirical evidence from a sample of Chief Information Officers (CIO)from US firms suggests that IT competence, competitive pressure and organizational agility are key factors that influence digital investment. Furthermore, the findings confirm the positive relationship between digital investment and IT innovation. Contrary to prior research, IT competence did not have a significant relationship with IT innovation. However, the results revealed that digital investment mediated the relationship between IT competence and IT innovation.

The Organisational Life Cycle Scale: An Empirical Validation

Organizational life cycle scales are widely relied upon by scholar and practitioners alike as a strategic tool to identify firms’ life cycle stages. However, little attention has been paid to verifying and validating the OLC measures despite the considerable amount of OLC literature. The purpose of this study is to critically examine the psychometric properties of the OLC scale proposed by Lester, Parnell and Carraher. Data were obtained from a sample of 174 Australian Chief Information Officers from different sized firms and different industries and analysed by the use of component-based structural equation modelling. Results showed that the five-stage OLC scale exhibits acceptable validity and reliability indices despite some minor weaknesses. Results also confirmed the validity and the generalisability of this scale to measure and identify OLC stages in different types of industries. Based on these results and the literature review, alternate items were developed as substitutes for the weak items and an agenda for future research on OLC measurement is provided.