Exploring the impact of electronic business readiness on leadership capabilities in information technology governance

This paper examines the task, relationship, and change orientations of e-business leadership, based on an exploratory study of 31 successfully operating e-business sites, with hypotheses developed from situational leadership theory. The results indicate that, despite different levels of e-business readiness, effective leadership is characterized by high task, high relationship, and high change-orientations. Critical e-business leadership capabilities are development and management of shared e-business vision and e-business strategy, collaborative business-IT relationships, and customer relationships. The implications for future research and practice are discussed.