Critical knowledge/skill sets required by industries: an empirical analysis
| Published date | 01 November 2001 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000006173 |
| Date | 01 November 2001 |
| Pages | 432-442 |
| Author | David C. Yen,Sooun Lee,Seokha Koh |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Critical knowledge/skill sets required by industries:
an empirical analysis
David C. Yen
Department of DSC and MIS, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Sooun Lee
Department of DSC and MIS, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA
Seokha Koh
Department of MIS, Chungbuk National University, Cheong Ju, Chung Buk, Korea
Introduction
In today's world, Information Systems (IS)
professionals are seeing changes occur
rapidly. These changes are being experienced
both in the business environment in which
they are working, and in the technologies
that they are using. In the past, many IS
professionals chose a single career path as a
programmer, analyst, project manager, or IS
manager. Now there is a new reality in which
there is a wide range of IS career paths (Lee et
al., 1995; Trauth et al., 1993).
The joint committee from ACM
(Association for Computing Machinery),
DPMA (Data Processing Management
Association), ICIS (International Conference
on InformationSystems) and AIS (Association
of Information Systems) recommended a
``unified'' undergraduate IS curriculum in
1995. This study can be used as a complement
to the aforementioned study to continuously
improve the academic curriculum.
A curriculum usually includes the
information, such as how many hours should
be allocated to various knowledge and skills
categories. Many researchers report a gap
between the relative importance of the
categories rated by industry and the
proportion of the hours provided for the
categories by IS curricula. Almost all of the
researchers regard the curriculum gap as a
proof of failure of formal education. They
imply that academy failed to provide what
was demanded by customers (customers are
absolutely right!) and that IS curricula must
be redesigned to provide various knowledge
and skills in proportion to the quantity
demanded by customers.
The curriculum gapby itself, however, may
not be an indication of failure. That is, it may
be desirable for IS progra ms not to allocate
credits to various knowledge and skills
according to their importance alone. This
research will investigate what criteria, along
with what level of importance should be
placed on each criterion, must be considered
and how they can be incorporated into
curriculum design. In addition, the authors
will investigate the possibility of customizing
IS curricula for various IS career paths.
Definition of IS
Glass (1992) and Couger et al. (1995)
differentiate IS from computer science or
software engineering according to the
context of the work to be performed, the type
of problems to be solved, the types of systems
to be designed and managed, and the way the
technology is employed, as follows:
The context of information systems is an
organization and its systems. The context of
computer science is algorithms and system
software.Incomputerscience,theemphasisis
on the systematic study of the algorithmic
process ± the theory, analysis, design,
efficiency, implementation, and application ±
that describes and transforms information.
The contextof software engineering tendsto be
large-scale software systems of the type found
in command and control systems, and large
inter-organizational systems. Although the
methods can be applied in small systems, the
context for the method is generally tied to the
problems of large systems.
The authors will define an IS professional as
being a person whose main tasks are to
develop information systems, to maintain
them, or to help people to use them in an
organization. This study will investigate
what IS curricula must provide to the student
to be an IS professional, but not to be, for
example, a hardware maintenance engineer.
Knowledge/skills required for IS
personnel
The graduate of an IS program should be
equipped to function in an entry-level
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available
at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
[ 432 ]
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/8 [2001] 432±442
#MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
Keywords
Client-server computing,
Information systems,
Information technology
Abstract
Classifies the critical knowledge/
skill set according to content or
domain of knowledge by means of
a survey. This is conducted in
accordance with what IS
practitioners and educators can
easily relate. The survey uses this
approach and includes four broad
categories of critical Information
Systems (IS) knowledge/skills: IS
technology knowledge/skills,
organizational and societal
knowledge/skills, interpersonal
knowledge/skills, and personal
trait knowledge/skills.
To continue reading
Request your trial