Does mutuality matter? Examining the bilateral nature and effects of CEO–CIO mutual understanding

•We examine the bilateral nature of mutual understanding in social alignment between CEOs and CIOs.•CEOs’/CIOs’ actual opinions on important business and IT topics are more similar than both perceive them to be.•On IT topics, CEOs are better able to correctly perceive their CIO’s opinions.•On business topics, CIOs are better able to predict their CEO’s opinions.•CIOs’ understanding of their CEO plays a more pivotal role for increasing collaboration quality.

Despite the criticality of a healthy partnership between CEOs and CIOs in organizations for effective business–IT alignment, we still know little about how crucial yet under-researched facets of mutual understanding compare between CEOs and CIOs and how their ability of mutual perspective-taking affects the quality of collaboration in their partnership. Drawing on two established theoretical models in social and personal relationship research, the perceptual congruence model (PCM) and the actor–partner interdependence model (APIM), our study examines 102 matched-pair survey responses of CEOs and CIOs using dyadic data analysis. Our findings show that both executives’ actual opinions on important business and IT topics are more similar than both perceive them to be. Accordingly, perceptions of each other’s opinions are negatively biased away from their real opinions. Moreover, our study demonstrates that CIOs’ understanding of their CEO plays a more pivotal role in predicting the quality of CEO–CIO collaboration than CEOs’ understanding of their CIO; this highlights the disparate importance of an active and passive role of understanding in the CEO–CIO partnership. Implications for research and practice are discussed.