Why I act differently: studying patterns of legitimation among CIOs through motive talk

Abstract

Purpose

IT governance has become the recognized norm system for chief information officers. The purpose of this paper is to understand how CIOs relate to these norms, by studying how they legitimate incompliance with the norms.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses an interpretive, qualitative, structured interview study with 18 CIOs in large Swedish organizations regarded as having excellent IT governance practice, using motive talk as analytical lens to identify the informants’ relationship to norms.

Findings

The study identifies norm‐specific patterns for how CIOs legitimate incompliance with IT governance, finding that CIOs use a combination of excuse and justifications as strategies of legitimation. The study also finds that CIOs display a tendency of not contesting IT governance‐related norms unless these are in conflict with neighboring professional jurisdictions. This is regarded as an identification of the “margins” of IT governance.

Research limitations/implications

The study illustrates how the theory of motive talk is a viable road ahead for future studies of IT professionals. The generalizability of the identified patterns of legitimation is limited by the selection of large organizations with solely male CIOs, as well as the selection of solely organizations that have succeeded in establishing external legitimacy concerning IT governance and the organizations being Swedish.

Practical implications

CIOs aspiring to increase their legitimacy should avoid direct conflicts with neighboring professions. In addition to this, they should also aspire to be clear in a separation of motive talk and actual practice, since full norm compliance may be detrimental to their factual operations.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper lies in the methodological approach of combining motive talk and speech acts to investigate CIO legitimation practices.

Citation

Magnusson, J. and Bygstad, B. (2013), "Why I act differently: studying patterns of legitimation among CIOs through motive talk", Information Technology & People, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 265-282. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-10-2012-0117