Chief Technology Officers: One Mission, Different Organizational Roles

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the technology management issue in the context of increasing requirements and challenges that modern executives have to face regarding efficient and proactive technology and innovation management, support of new product and service lines, and business development. The main focus of this research is the diversity of organizational roles performed by top and middle managers experiencing a strong impact of the “technological factor”. Those executives who officially occupy the highest position associated with technology responsibilities are called Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). At the same time, in many companies — especially in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — such a position is not officially given. The managers who partially or fully perform the CTO functionality even if they do not have this official post are respectively named “Hidden” CTOs. At the same time, it is important to note that despite the presence in practice of more than 40 years, the term CTO is still associated with lots of controversy. There are dozens of contradictory definitions and disputes between practitioners and theorists that lead to a blurring of the CTO term meaning. In practice, it can be observed that the contradictions about the functionality of a technology manager can lead to the fact that the management potential cannot be fully activated and that management priorities are set incorrectly or unclearly. This paper presents a new approach to the CTO position definition based on the analysis of internal and external specifics combined with change management dynamics. Further, this new approach was used as the framework for an empirical study, based on a semi-structured questionnaire and personal interviews. In the study, the roles of international executives dealing with technological topics were investigated. The first results of the study have shown that modern technology executives are not narrowly profiled specialists focusing on purely technological issues. They are increasingly appointed as members of the top management team (TMT), for bringing in the technological perspective in the general management process. In their function, they link up between different stakeholders in terms of technology efficient use and their progressive development.