Soft skills and creativity in IS professionals

Abstract

Although the soft (i.e. non-technical) skills of information systems (IS) professionals are recognized as important for job performance, few attempts have been made to study systematically the concept of soft skills. We draw upon the pioneering work in the area of practical intelligence and creativity at the workplace to develop the concept of soft skills and to validate an instrument to assess soft skills within the IS profession. We define soft skills as a set of self-management and self-regulation strategies for managing self; managing careers; and managing others within the IS work context. A computer-based instrument is developed to elicit these strategies of IS professionals when faced with IS related work situations. Based on the instrument, we benchmark a group of experienced IS professional against a group of inexperienced first-year undergraduates in a computer science program. The respondents' self-management strategies are then evaluated for quality by a panel of senior IS managers. Our findings indicate that inexperienced undergraduates possess as good a set of soft skills as their experienced counterparts in managing themselves, peers, and their superiors. However, experienced IS professionals possess better soft skill strategies for managing subordinates, clients and vendors than do inexperienced IS undergraduates. The results confirm the importance of work exposure and work experience in developing soft skills. Experienced IS professionals have been exposed to more complex situations at work and have therefore evolved a more complex set of self-management and self-regulation strategies and mental schema. We conclude with implications for selection, training, and development of IS professionals in soft skills.