The Influence Of CIO Political Skill On Organizational Agility:the Mediating Role Of Issue Selling

As the international economy,technologies and politics are undergoing profound adjustments nowadays,the world is undergoing profound changes that is unseen in a century.Uncertain and complex turbulent environment brings great challenges to the survival and development of enterprises.Organizational agility,which means that sensing and responding to environmental turbulence quickly,can help enterprises achieve sustainable competitive advantages,and has become one of the popular issues in current academic research and enterprises’ practice.Given the information technology(IT),especially the digital technology(the new generation of IT),plays a critical role in achieving organizational agility,existing research emphasizes the positive effects of the shared and consistent cognition,goals and actions between the corporate CIO(chief information officer)and business executives on organizational agility.However,due to the large investment in new IT to construct and improve organizational agility and the high sunk costs of old IT systems,and digital technology-enabled business innovation that need to be carried out timely often involves high complexity,risk and a series of organizational changes,and also the lack of sufficient technical cognition of business executives themselves,business executives may have inconsistent cognition and understanding with the CIO on the strategic value and knowledge of using IT to achieve organizational agility,and it is difficult for both of them to quickly reach consistent goals and actions on using IT,thus hindering the organizational agility.Unfortunately,the existing literature lacks indepth research on how to achieve organizational agility when that inconsistent cognition appears.Therefore,to fulfill this research gap,and given that CIOs should take responsibilities for realizing the strategic value of IT and promoting organizational agility,this thesis mainly discusses the research question that how the CIO can promote organizational agility when business executives have inconsistent cognition with the CIO.The upper echelons theory emphasizes that organizational strategic decision is the "reflection" of the psychological behavioral characteristics of top managers.This theory is also applicable to understand the organizational agility and its related information or digital strategic decision.Firstly,according to the upper echelons theory,this thesis focuses on the influence on organizational agility by the individual psychological and behavioral characteristics of the CIO and the interaction behaviors between the CIO and business executives.Secondly,Since the organization is essentially a political arena involving internal cognitive difference,and political skill reflects individual psychological behavioral characteristics of dedicating to achieve personal or organizational goals by understanding and influencing others’ cognition and behaviors,this thesis proposes that political skill is the basic personal characteristic of the CIO that influences business executives to form consistent cognition to exert strategic influence and then achieve the goal of organizational agility.Lastly,the CIO need to interact with business executives to directly promote consistent cognition.However,many CIOs’ structural power,which is conferred formally by the organization,is often inferior to other top managers and the CIO need to actively acquire business executives’ attention and cognition of strategic issues through issue selling,so this thesis further proposes CIO issue selling that reflects team behavior characteristic of the CIO actively interacting with business executives,and issue selling is a critical path of leveraging political skill to promote organizational agility.Accordingly,the thesis proposes a research model which CIO political skill affects organizational agility through CIO issue selling effectiveness.Based on the data analysis results of 241 match-pair samples of CIOs and business executives,the research hypothesis of this thesis are well supported,Specifically,(1)CIO social astuteness,interpersonal influence,networking ability and apparent sincerity,as the dimensions of CIO political skill,all have positive impacts on CIO issue selling effectiveness;(2)CIO issue selling effectiveness has positive impacts on organizational agility;(3)CIO issue selling effectiveness respectively mediates the impacts of CIO social astuteness,networking ability and apparent sincerity on organizational agility,while CIO interpersonal influence indirectly affects organizational agility through issue selling effectiveness;(4)CIO structural power positively moderates the impacts of CIO issue selling effectiveness on organizational agility,and also moderates the mediating effects of CIO issue selling effectiveness.There are three main research contributions and innovations of this thesis.Firstly,although existing organizational agility research emphasizes the positive effects of the shared and consistent cognition and goals between the CIO and business executives on organizational agility,but still lacks theoretical explanation on how to achieve organizational agility when the CIO and business executives have inconsistent cognition.While by drawing on the upper echelons theory and making empirical analysis,this thesis finds that the CIO’s political skill and effective issue selling help to influence business executives to form the consistent cognition,goals and actions between the CIO and business executives to improve organizational agility,therefore making up for the above research gap.Secondly,unlike the existing research on CIO strategic influence which mainly emphasizes that structural power,knowledge and experience are the key elements for CIOs to exert strategic influence at the individual level,this thesis finds that using their own political skill is a new way for CIOs to exert strategic influence and achieve organizational agility and other strategic objects.Thirdly,the existing research on political skill and issue selling is basically independent,while this thesis reveals the influence mechanism that CIO political skill affects organizational agility through the mediating role of issue selling.It is the first time that the four dimensions of political skill are found to be the important antecedents to improve the effectiveness of issue selling,and CIOs’ structural power is an important boundary condition for their political skill and issue selling to affect organizational agility.Finally,the empirical findings of this thesis not only provide valuable practical guidance for enterprises on how to improve organizational agility to respond to environmental turbulence,but also provide important management implications of how CIOs can effectively achieve strategic influence within the organization,and how CIOs fulfill their key responsibilities on promoting organizational agility.