As a Database Administrator, I don't normally have much direct contact with non-IT end-users; I normally interact with Application Development teams and Data Center personnel, and my interactions are fairly positive (because these teams are looking for services from the DBA's).
However, I see a distinct hierarchy within IT - CIO-level management, if anything, tends to reinforce the view of IT as an 'expensive', 'necessary evil' sort of service by constantly pressuring for cost-cutting and resisting calls for IT workerbees to be _ahead_ of the users by creating test labs or prototyping environments for _IT_ people to explore and become conversant with the latest technologies in order to be able to better work with/advise end-users when they want to implement such - but woe betide if some executive can't access his Lotus Notes, Blackberry or such!
And, in this New World Order Of Outsourcing, DBA's and the few remaining in-house IT personnel often shoulder the burden of actually getting the _outsourcer_ personnel to perform contractual duties.....as well as fill in the inevitable gaps that the outsource contract doesn't cover