The MLQ has been used extensively during the past 20 years. Kahai says misaligned IT and ineffective IT spending seem to be critical reasons behind the failure of IT to improve organizational performance, and the major probable cause is inappropriate IS leadership exercised by the CIO. But while past research has made important contributions in describing behaviours or structural features of IS leadership and how these may be related to organizational and environmental factors, it has failed to allow IS executives to determine leadership behaviours that would enable a high level of IS unit performance.
"Enabling superior IS unit performance is an important goal for organizations and IS executives, and an understanding of leadership behaviours that would enable such a performance is likely to be very useful," Kahai says. To this end, Kahai has taken the Full Range Model, added Instrumental Leadership to it, as suggested in the paper at http://gli.unl.edu/conference/documents/paper10092.doc and applied that to CIO behaviour.
He has found the Modified Full Range Model does a good job in terms of describing in a general way the various leadership behaviours of successful CIOs. So far he has not been able to find corresponding specific CIO behaviours to match several behaviours within the Modified Full Range Model, but hopes to do so when his research is complete.
"The idea behind creating a mapping of CIO behaviours to the Full Range Model is that such a map would act as a first step in CIO leadership development. The Full Range Model has been validated by research, and by creating a mapping of specific CIO behaviours we would be providing a pair of glasses to CIOs to make sense of their behaviours with their followers (that is, see it through the perspective of the Full Range Model) and understand what impact their different behaviours can have," Kahai says.
"Right now they may be executing some of these behaviours - but not knowing the relevance of these behaviours and what impact they could have and when they might be appropriate, acts as a barrier to the development of leadership potential. Of course, just knowing about the relevant leadership behaviours is not enough - their enactment and learning from them is vital to the development of leadership. Hence, the mapping is just a first step."
Avolio says those organizations that have been most successful in achieving dramatic transformations in their leadership systems have had several distinguishing characteristics:
• First, they have articulated in terms of new systems and processes what they are hoping and expecting to evolve.
• Second, they have realized the need to replace old systems, and have spent time retiring them, while in the midst of creating new ones.
• Third, they have considered the needs of individuals at all levels who are used to operating in a different way, and have taken the time to explain, justify and ultimately reward operating in new and substantially different ways. In this regard, they have involved those being affected in the process of change, by including their ideas, needs, concerns and aspirations as part of the process of change.
• Fourth, they have made it worthwhile to change, motivating individuals to operate in line with the new system's requirements.
• Fifth, they have provided the necessary education to change rather than simply assuming that people know how to change.
• Sixth, they have demonstrated the courage to stay on course, regardless of the resistance to change, and have been patient, allowing for mistakes to occur along the way.
Interestingly enough, each of the distinguishing characteristics mentioned above represents a form of leadership, often described and observed at a systemic or organizational level. Indeed, it requires leadership to successfully transform the leadership systems in our organizations, Kahai says.
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