Judith C. Simon

IT Workforce Trends: Implications For IS Programs

Findings in an IT workforce study support the emphasis of business content espoused by IS curriculum guidelines. Business domain and project management skills are critical to keep in house while technical skills were cited as the top skills sourced. Paradoxically, technical skills are those cited for entry-level positions. We discuss the issues raised by these findings and recommend several approaches for IS programs to consider. IS programs must offer a functionally integrated curriculum and deliver it in an experiential business context. We provide several examples of innovative pedagogical approaches and industry alliances which demonstrate mechanisms to provide students with a stronger business orientation in applying IT. We recommend a more proactive approach to enrollment including better promotion of IS programs.

The requisite variety of skills for IT professionals

Introduction IT professionals are beset by ongoing changes in technology and business practices. Some commentators have suggested that, in order to stay competitive, IT professionals should retool themselves to gain competency in specific in-demand technical skills. This article argues that thriving in such a dynamic environment requires competency in a broad range of skills, including not only technical skills, but non-technical skills as well. Our research shows that IT departments in non-IT companies report that while both technical and non-technical skills are important, the skills most critical to retain in-house and most sought in new mid-level employees are non-technical skills such as project management, business domain knowledge and relationship skills. These skills are critical because they enable IT departments to work effectively with other departments, internal users, and external customers and suppliers. Non-technical skills leverage technical skills to augment the organizations overall effectiveness in designing and delivering solutions to meet an organizations challenges and opportunities. These findings depart from previous articles emphasizing technical skills as a basis for valuing IT workers and other research recommending business-oriented skills only for those managing IT workers, not for IT professionals themselves. Our findings lead us to the realization that in todays environment of continuous and fast-paced change, a mix of skills is essential for IT professionals. We believe that the Law of Requisite Variety can help explain the need for greater breadth of knowledge and skills among IT professionals. From cybernetics, the Law of Requisite Variety states that adapting to change requires a varied enough solution set to match the complexity of an environment. In this case, IT workers need a broad enough range of knowledge and skills to meet the demands of their increasingly dynamic and complex profession. Based on our research, we offer a framework outlining six skill categories. We believe that all six skill categories are critically important for the career development of IT professionals.

IT Workforce Trends: Implications for Curriculum and Hiring

140, January 2009 A panel on workforce trends in the information technology industry was held at the AMCIS meeting in Toronto, Canada, in August 2008. Panelists discussed a continuing research project about the current state of the IT workforce and future trends, sponsored by the Society for Information Management (SIM). The initial phase was a study of workforce trends in IT client companies, completed in 2006. Results from phase one revealed a shift in the mission of the information system function from delivering technology-based solutions to

An Alternative Method To Measure MIS Faculty Teaching Performance.

Teaching effectiveness at higher education institutions has captured the public attention for at least three decades. The majority of higher education institutions have investigated the relationships between teaching effectiveness and research productivity by measuring teaching effectiveness using students’ evaluations. However, research has indicated that student evaluations are not a reliable measure of performance. This paper introduces an alternative approach to measuring a professor’s performance using student evaluations in the field of information systems. This method measures the significant differences in students’ perceptions with respect to information technology and computers in business, the knowledge gained after taking a particular course, and the effect of the course professor on students’ perceptions. An empirical study involving 328 students at a major university was conducted. Results of the study highlight the contributions of this method in better assessing teaching performance in the area of information systems.

Creating Better Governance of Offshore Services

Abstract Given the extensive history that companies now have with offshore outsourcing and the critical role that it continues to play, it is vital that we synthesize the many lessons learned and formalize them into a workable and flexible governance model. A review of the leading academic and practitioner literature on offshore outsourcing provided the basis for development of nine attributes of best practices/maturity. These attributes were used further to propose a framework for mature offshore outsourcing governance. We conducted a case study of a leading U.S.-headquartered multinational company and its major offshore vendors, some of whom the company had been involved in offshoring with for many years. By juxtaposing the case study experiences with the disparate literature on offshore outsourcing and IT governance, a proposed model for mature offshore outsourcing governance emerged.

A Typology of Requisite Skills for Information Technology Professionals

Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of data gathered in structured interviews with 96 IT managers and executives, this paper proposes a typology of IT skills. The resulting typology is comprehensive enough to represent both current and future skills, concise enough to do so in a parsimonious and easily understood manner, consistent with general themes from prior research, and generalizable enough to accommodate future changes in the field.

Internet transactions: perceptions of personal risk

User perception of the risk associated with giving information to online companies is examined, as well as user concerns with personal privacy and beliefs that using the internet can result in personal privacy problems. A research model was proposed by integrating constructs from previous research, and a survey was conducted to examine one construct: user perception of the internet or the degree to which individuals discriminate between online versus traditional companies. Overwhelmingly, respondents reported feeling more at risk and less safe when giving information to firms that conduct business only online than when giving information to firms that conduct business only in the traditional face-to-face manner in an office or store. Additionally, 65% of those surveyed believe that using the internet can result in personal privacy problems. This paper suggests that positive merchant/web attributes are necessary but insufficient to provide the assurance of transaction safety that web users require.