Exploring multi-level tensions in the interplay of Chief Digital Officers and Chief Executive Officers

The Chief Digital Officer (CDO) has emerged as a response for firms seeking to drive digital transformation (DT). While CDOs are often portrayed as leading DT, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) remains responsible for the company’s overall direction. However, the crucial CDO-CEO interplay is ill-understood, yet particularly intricate since DT gives rise to numerous situations marked by contradictory demands. By adopting a paradox theory lens in an interpretive multiple-case study, we examine how 12 CDO-CEO dyads navigate DT. We identify paradoxical tensions in the CDO-CEO interplay as well as at the organizational level. Furthermore, we explore that CDOs and CEOs employ distinct approaches—suppressing, assimilating, and compromising—to address the tensions at the dyadic level. The findings suggest that the handling of the dyadic-level tensions shapes the evolution of tensions at the organizational level through three mechanisms, i.e. spill-over, translation, and calibration. Our contribution is threefold: First, we unveil the paradoxical tensions that emerge in the CDO-CEO interplay. Second, we show how CDOs’ and CEOs’ approaches to managing these tensions shape the trajectory of DT. Third, by identifying tensions at the dyadic level and theorizing their connection to organizational-level tensions, we advance research on multi-level paradoxical tensions.