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

We encourage chief information officers (CIOs) to play more active roles in organizational level strategy making in the digital era and examine how CIOs could lead their organizations’ digital innovation initiatives. We propose that it is the CIO’s effectiveness in issue selling (i.e., the acts that are directed toward affecting top management teams’ (TMT) attention to and understanding of strategic issues), rather than his or her structural position, that directly influences the level of organizational digital innovation success. Nevertheless, CIO 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/TMT 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.

Observed Issue Selling: The Effects of Role Models, Willingness to Issue Sell, and Inclusion in Decision Making

This study examines issue selling (an early component of the change process in which higher-level managers are influenced to pay attention to issues). Building on the conservation of resources model, social contextual factors (role models for issue selling and inclusion in decision making) are proposed to explain when and how issue selling occurs during the early stages of change. This research breaks new ground by examining issue selling behavior (as observed by supervisors) in conjunction with willingness to issue sell. Results based on a sample of 191 employee–supervisor dyads suggest that role models positively contributed to willingness to issue sell, which was positively related to issue selling when individuals perceived that they were involved in decision making. To increase the likelihood that employees will engage in issue selling to facilitate change, managers should provide exposure to issue selling role models and should increase employees’ perceived inclusion in decision making.

Price Pressure and Overnight Seasoned Equity Offerings

Between 2009 and 2014, 75% of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) were announced and issued overnight, compared to 27% between 2000 and 2008. Overnight issuers obtain a higher SEO offer price because they experience more favorable pre-offer returns. Consistent with these favorable returns being due to the avoidance of pre-issue selling pressure, non-overnight issuers experience a 2.5% pre-issue stock-price decline that reverses within 7 days. This post-issue reversal is increasing in SEO offer size and bigger following large pre-issue price declines. In contrast, returns following overnight offerings are less positive and unrelated to SEO offer size or pre-issue returns.