中国企业正加大IT投入并纷纷把信息化建设提升到战略高度，首席信息官（Chief Information Officers，CIOs）亟需打造战略型影响力，以IT驱动产品创新并提升组织的利润水平。然而弱权状态成为中国CIO领导力建设过程的巨大障碍，学术界尚未打开CIO弱权现象成因的黑箱，针对此种情境的应对策略分析尚不充分。因此，本课题基于新制度主义理论和权变理论，聚焦弱权状态下中国CIO领导力的构建问题。具体拟回答以下两个研究问题：（1）导致中国CIO群体弱权状态的制度因素是什么？其作用机制为何？（2）当职位权力于短时间得不到提升的情况下，CIO有何应对策略？本课题拟分别采用实证研究和案例研究，从理论上扩展中国情境CIO职位权力现状的制度成因的研究，并为弱权CIO领导力构建提供“怎样做”的理论探究，且本项目所得研究结论也将对中国企业调整IT治理结构、有效推进信息化进程形成有益启示。

This research chooses Chinese CIO(Chief Information Officer) leadership with low structural power as the topic, which not only follows the requirement of information construction in Chinese companies, but also reflects the bottleneck during Chinese CIOs’ daily work. Low structural power has become a threat to the formation of CIO demand-side leadership, which could further impede information systems’ construction process and hinder IT-driven product design and relative profit-making. Former literature on CIO leadership leaves the gap of institutional mechanism and coping strategy in order to deal with the low structural power dilemma of Chinese CIOs. Drawing on institutional theory and contingency theory, we attempt to open the black box of CIOs’ low structural power status and to build a theoretical model to explain its institutional causes, while we also explore how do CIOs deal with lower structural power status. Specifically, two research questions are to be answered: (1) what are institutional antecedents of CIOs’ low structural power and its mechanism? (2) How do CIOs cope with low structural power, and how to overcome the barrier of low structural power and to build CIO leadership? Using empirical method and case study, we are going to empirically test our theoretical model. This study will enrich the extant research on the institutional antecedents to CIOs’ low structural power and “how to do” research for CIO leadership building with limitation of low structural power. Managerial implications are provided as well.