Is the CIO the "last among equals"? Students' perceptions of the stereotype profiles of CIOS, CFOS, and CMOS

Since the origin of the IT executive role in organizations, researchers have often emphasized the ambiguous and challenging role that CIOs face in organizations. While some argue that CIOs embrace new leadership roles in their organizations and suggest that CIOs should mean "Chief Influential Officers", many others argue the opposite and even refer to the term CIO as the "Career Is Over". We argue that these roles may be influenced by the existence and potentially persistence of distinct stereotype profiles at the C-suite level. This paper explores business students' perceptions of CIOs in comparison with CMOs and CFOs. Our results suggest that business students enter their professional careers with well-defined stereotype profiles of business leaders and that these leaders are seen as distinct on two important leadership domains - social and dominance leadership. There are also indicators that some business leaders share more perceived leadership traits than others. Such similarities and differences in leadership profiles may have important implications for the role of the CIO in organizations.