Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce

Abstract

These proceedings provide a compilation of the presentations at the 2003 annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Groups on Computer Personnel Research (SIGCPR) and Management Information Systems (SIGMIS), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition to the topics of traditional and ongoing interest to the SIGs, this conference sought research related to the conference theme of diversity in the IT workforce.With growing frequency, it seems, external pressures are presenting significant challenges to the IT profession. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the challenge of ensuring a supply of appropriately qualified IT personnel is increasingly bound up with issues of diversity. The goal of valuing differences applies to both intellectual and demographic diversity. Part of the aftermath of September 11, 2001 is that IT skills once seen as on the periphery of the field have moved to center stage. Those who possess expertise in security, authentication, encryption and risk management, for example, are suddenly in great demand much as those with telecommunications expertise were highly sought a decade ago after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Consequently, a research challenge is to explore ways to ensure that there is sufficient intellectual diversity in the educational preparation of IT professionals to enable us to quickly respond to these unexpected problems and opportunities.As the appetite for IT continues to grow, the IT profession is challenged with meeting the demand to enlarge the IT workforce by recruiting and retaining personnel from historically underrepresented groups. Further, as the global economy expands, CIO's are faced with managing a geographically dispersed and culturally disparate IT labor force. As a result of these pressures on the IT profession, new questions arise about the educational and professional development the IT workforce. A host of research questions emerge: Should there be special recruitment and retention strategies for historically underrepresented groups in the IT profession? What can be done to recruit and retain women and racial/ethnic minorities in the IT field? What are the management challenges for a multicultural IT workforce? Should diversity only be seen as a social goal or can it also be seen as a resource to be leveraged for competitive advantage? The conference theme of leveraging differences and diversity sought to explore these issues relating to diverse skill sets, diverse personnel, and diverse cultures.This is a year of transition for this conference. As the conference was being prepared the merger of SIGCPR and SIGMIS was underway. It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that the conference theme be about diversity and the benefits that derive from change.