Abstract
Compliance with IT security policies is critical to the organization's success in securing information. IT leadership is vital in influencing employees' IT security compliance. Although female IT leadership is growing, there is little research conducted to date guiding female CIOs, considering the prevalence of unconscious gender biases and stereotyping. The evidence from our experiment using data from Mturk suggests that the gender of the CIO plays an important role in influencing the employees' intentions and reactance to comply with security recommendations. The study helps inform IT literature on the role of the security message sender's characteristics and guides CIOs, particularly women, on how they can tailor their leadership style to achieve greater behavior change. Our work creates awareness of the extent of stereotyping and society's expectations of gender roles still prevalent today while at the same time responding to the calls for increased attention to social inclusion issues in IT.
Recommended Citation
Bansal, Gaurav and Axelton, Zhuoli, "Because She's Worth IT: Stereotype Challenges for Female CIOs in Ensuring IT Security Compliance" (2023). MWAIS 2023 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/mwais2023/16