TY - JOUR A1 - Westner, Markus A1 - Kratzer, Simon A1 - Drechsler, Andreas A1 - Strahringer, Susanne T1 - The Fractional CIO in SMEs: conceptualization and research agenda JF - Information Systems and e-Business Management N2 - We conceptualize the new phenomenon of the Fractional Chief InformationOfficer (CIO) as a part-time executive who usually works for more than one pri-marily small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) and develop promising avenuesfor future research on Fractional CIOs. We conduct an empirical study by drawingon semi-structured interviews with 40 individuals from 10 different countries whooccupy a Fractional CIO role. We derive a definition for the Fractional CIO, dis-tinguish it from other forms of employment, and compare it with existing researchon CIO roles. Further, we find four salient engagement types of Fractional CIOsoffering value for SMEs in various situations: Strategic IT management, Restruc-turing, Rapid scaling, and Hands-on support. The results reveal similarities withexisting CIO roles as well as novel insights concerning the different engagementtypes. Lastly, we propose a research agenda for the Fractional CIO field, based onfour research themes derived from existing CIO research and insights from theinterviews. KW - Fractional CIO KW - Virtual CIO KW - IT leadership KW - Part-time management KW - SMEs KW - Small businesses KW - Interim management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-022-00557-4 VL - 20 SP - 581 EP - 611 PB - Springer ER -