The purpose of this research is to describe the constantly changing role of a CIO. IT is one of the youngest functions found in organisations; it started to develop in the 1950s, gradually becoming established in the 1960s. By the end of the 1970s, it was still a support function in all industries (Ross & Feeny 2001). Now, about 50 years later, there are industries in which information technology (IT) and business can no longer be separated, and to pose the question of how to align the IT strategy with the business strategy (Henderson & Venkatraman 1989) is outdated, because IT is the core of the business strategy. One example is the finance company Goldman Sachs, in which 10 000 of 33 000 employees are engineers and programmers (Gupta 2016). 

Consequently, IT organisations have spent their entire existence in the midst of change (Hirschheim, Porra & Parks 2003). It can be said that there is no single established way to gain the most value from IT. There are several categorizations of the profile of the IT function. In many cases, IT is still seen as a support function and its role as delivering computing power to business organisations. In these cases, the IT investment decisions are made not by the IT department but by the business management, which holds the responsibility for these investments (Guillemette & Pare 2012). However, the IT organisation has the potential both to create effectiveness and to add customer value. Furthermore, IT is able to act as the function that creates a cash flow through technological innovation and, by transforming the enterprise, to incorporate new business (Polansky, Inuganti & Wiggins 2004). 

Clearly, if IT organisations have been in turmoil, so has the role of a CIO. During several decades, numerous studies have been conducted on the role of a CIO (e.g. Synnott & Gruber 1981, 45-69; Applegate & Elam 1992; Ross & Feeny 2001; Fisher 2003; Chun & Mooney 2009; Weill & Woerner 2013), and researchers have reached the consensus that the role is changing. However, it seems that the shared understanding of the role has not stabilised yet. This research explores the reasons for the changing role of a CIO and its value to companies. It concentrates on the main factors influencing that role. 

This interpretive work offers several theoretical contributions. The results demonstrate that the Leavitt model (Leavitt 1965, 1145) endures over time and describes the factors that exert an impact on the role and tasks of a CIO in an organisation. The findings also show the usefulness of the punctuated equilibrium model combined with Granovetter’s (1973; 1983; 2005) social network theory adopted from organisational research. The enhanced interactive multi-stage interview method is another contribution. It was developed for and used in this research. The findings indicate that the method enhanced the credibility and trustworthiness of this interpretive study. 

The main contribution to the communities of practising CIOs is a profound understanding of the role and the tasks of a CIO in an organisation. Due to the increasing role of information technology, executives need to find new ways to organise the division of IT work in an organisation. That is, the traditional way of organising IT work into an isolated IT function may no longer work. Freeing the CIO from the IT silo enables the organisation to enhance its efficiency and find optimal solutions to lead and deploy the technological (r)evolution in business. According to our interviewees’ perceptions about their own role, organisations appear to have different views about the CIO’s role and tasks. A graphical tool was created to show imbalances in work equilibria, and the resulting graphical presentations were shown to be powerful tools to create a shared understanding of the issues hindering cooperation in an organisation.