Society for Information Management

The Society for Information Management is a US non-profit membership association for senior technology executives, founded in 1968 as the Society for Management Information Systems and renamed SIM in 1982. It is organised around 38 local chapters in the United States and Canada, with a Member At-Large category for those outside chapter areas; joining SIM means joining a chapter, and the membership year runs from 1 January to 31 December. Four membership categories are published - Practitioner, Academic, Consultant and Other Leader - each with a written definition rather than a company-size test. Alongside chapter programming SIM runs several national institutions: the Advanced Practices Council, a subscription research body founded in 1991; the Rising Leaders Forum, a ten-month leadership programme founded in 1992 with over 3,000 graduates; the SIM Leadership Institute formed in 2021; SIM Women, launched in 2007; and the annual SIM IT Trends Study. Dues are set by each chapter and are not published centrally.

How it works

A prospective member applies through a chapter, or as a Member At-Large if no chapter is nearby, and is admitted under one of the four published categories. Chapters typically hold four to six events a year and run peer groups of members in comparable roles plus topic-based special interest groups. National programmes - the Advanced Practices Council, Rising Leaders Forum, Leadership Institute and the annual research studies - are bought or applied for separately by members or their employers.

Typical member

Members are corporate or divisional heads of information systems and the management staff supporting them, plus full-time academics in the IS field, partner-level consultants and non-IT executives with a major role in strategic technology direction. SIM says its members' employers account for over $200 billion in technology spend.

SIM is a professional association with peer-group elements, not a facilitated peer-advisory organisation: there are no paid chairs and no standing confidential forum of the Vistage kind, though chapter peer groups and interest groups approximate it. Its real assets are the Advanced Practices Council research subscription, the Rising Leaders Forum, and the annual IT Trends Study, which is widely cited. The awkward part for a prospective member is pricing: SIM does not publish national dues at all, because joining happens at chapter level, and chapter schedules vary widely - Southern California charges $285 for a corporate practitioner and $205 for academic, retired or non-profit members, with an enterprise package at $795 for three, while other chapters publish two-tier plans running several hundred dollars higher. Entry is by category definition rather than seniority threshold, so the room is broader than the CIO-only framing suggests: consultants and vendors qualify under two of the four categories.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.