A CEO of a company heard about your qualifications as an IS consultant, and appr

Question

A CEO of a company heard about your qualifications as an IS consultant, and approached you for advice. She told you that she is about to install information systems in her company, and she had a good candidate for heading this activity. This candidate was highly recommended by a friend of hers. During the process of interviewing the candidate, she was impressed by his skills and personality and was about to offer him the job. At the conclusion of the interviews, the candidate told her that a condition for accepting the offer, he must be appointed CIO and have “a seat at the executive table”.

In thinking through the consequences of appointing the IT manager as the CIO, the CEO realized that there were significant costs involved. The position at the executive level would entitle him to a higher salary, and other benefits which the other “C” level executives receive. In her view, as she told you, the other executives, (HR, finance, operation VP’s), deserve the additional compensation since their contribution to the organization and its operation and performance is well defined and has been recognized and appreciated for many years. The contribution of IT is not as tangible.” IT just provides some reports”, and these reports may not justify the cost.

As a consultant that is fully aware of the business perception of IT, and of the difficult economic situation, you realize the importance of cost saving. What will you advice the CEO to do? Explain with rationale.

Explanation / Answer

Although the candidate is highly recommneded as the IT manager but appointing the same as CIO is not very well justified. The other C level executives deserve the position as justified by the CEO. It would be very diff=icult to justify the appointment of a person as CIO when he only deserves the post of an IT manager.

More over if an organisation is through the difficult time cost needs to be justified to the management. The best option would be to appoint the candidate as IT manager for a specified time period and after close monitoring of the performance a post of CIO could be considered based on a collaborative decision of the management.

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