Information Technology Occupations Research Articles

A Comparison of Propensity Score and Linear Regression Analysis of Complex Survey Data

We extend propensity score methodology to incorporate survey weights from complex survey data and compare the use of multiple linear regression and propensity score analysis to estimate treatment effects in observational data from a complex survey. For illustration, we use these two methods to estimate the effect of gender on information technology (IT) salaries. In our analysis, both methods agree on the size and statistical significance of the overall gender salary gaps in the United States in four different IT occupations after controlling for educational and job-related covariates. Each method, however, has its own advantages which are discussed. We also show that it is important to incorporate the survey design in both linear regression and propensity score analysis. Ignoring the survey weights affects the estimates of population-level effects substantially in our analysis.

Creation or Destruction? STEM OPT Extension and Employment of Information Technology Professionals

Information technology (IT) professionals play an important role in firms' IT investments, technology formation, development, and innovation, contributing to economic growth in the U.S. The use of temporary work visas and related immigration policies that import foreign IT professionals has attracted a significant controversy and policy debates in the U.S. On the one hand, foreign IT professionals may complement domestic IT professionals by facilitating local innovation and expanding local employment. On the other hand, foreign professionals may substitute the domestic counterparts by intensifying labor-market competition, leading to a decrease in wage or even crowding-out of domestic IT professionals. In this study, we focus on an extension in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from U.S. institutions, a policy change which greatly increases the supply of foreign IT professionals in local labor markets. Specifically, we explore: (1) the effects of the OPT extension on the number and wage of domestic workers in STEM occupations and (2) how the effects may differ between IT and non-IT STEM occupations. We test the effects using a novel and rich data set that is merged from several sources and use a difference-in-differences model to bring identification. Our results demonstrate that an increase in the supply of foreign IT professionals as a result of the OPT extension boosts employment for domestic IT professionals. The unique characteristics of IT human capital differentiate the impacts on IT occupations from non-IT STEM occupations. This study contributes to the information systems, labor economics, and public policy literature by quantifying the impacts of a policy change on the supply and return of IT professionals and provides rich implications for policymakers.

The Occupational Structures of Low- and High-Wage Service Sector Establishments

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this study, the author investigates whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. The author shows that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared with high-wage establishments operating in the same local labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the same narrowly defined labor and product markets, low-wage establishments organize production to less intensively use labor in skilled occupations.

Making the Jump: Understanding the Associativity Between Perceived Job Performance and Turnover Intention of IT Professionals in Higher Education

As higher education institutions continue to operationally mature, there is an inherent need to adopt new technology to maintain relevancy and efficiency. To meet the demand and expectation of modern society, information technology (IT) departments have seen rapid growth in higher education. However, similar growth trends within many industries have warranted these technical capabilities, which places these positions in high demand. A challenged faced by higher education institutions is the capability to attract, cultivate, and retain IT professionals based on the competitiveness of the market. Previous research has demonstrated that job performance has been found as an antecedent for turnover intention within the overall industry and IT occupations. The purpose of this study is to determine if similar associativity exists between perceived job performance and turnover intention within IT professionals in higher education. The results of the research can provide relevant information for institutions seeking to develop employee retention plans with IT departments.

The Occupational Structures of Low- and High-Wage Service Sector Establishments

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this paper, I investigate whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. I show that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared to high-wage establishments operating in the same local-labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the same narrowly defined labor and product markets, low-wage establishments organize production to less intensively use labor in skilled occupations.

Making Black Lives Matter in the Information Technology Profession

Despite lucrative career opportunities in information technology (IT), representation of Blacks in IT occupations is abysmal. IT careers are a viable source of economic advancement for Blacks who as a group face significant entry and advancement barriers in the labor market. We argue that the information systems (IS) community can make Black lives matter in IT by advancing their opportunities in this occupational space in an equitable manner. Such advancements require a dialogue within the IS community about the following: What can the IS community do to foster greater inclusion of Blacks in IT profession? To begin this dialogue, a panel of five IS scholars, Drs. K. D. Joshi, Eileen Trauth, Lynette Kvasny, Allison J. Morgan, and Fay Cobb Payton, who participated in the panel organized at SIGMIS CPR 2016 in Washington, D.C. (Trauth et al. 2016b), share their perspectives on making Black lives matter in the information technology profession. An agenda is proposed that calls on IS scholars to conduct research on issues discussed in this paper and appeals to IT practitioners and educators to foster greater inclusion of Blacks in the IT profession.

The influence of job characteristics on IT and non-IT job professional’s turnover intentions

Purpose– Information technology (IT) professionals and their intentions to leave an organization have been studied by researchers; however, these studies do not compare the turnover intentions of IT professionals with non-IT professionals from the same institution. The purpose of this paper is to examine how IT and non-IT job professionals relate to motivational and social job characteristics and their impact on job satisfaction, job performance and turnover intentions.Design/methodology/approach– Data were collected from IT-shared services employees through a survey and quantitative analyses were performed.Findings– Among the motivational job characteristics, IT professionals experienced greater task significance than the non-IT job holders. With social job characteristics, IT professionals had greater outside interaction than the non-IT professionals. However, the non-IT professionals had greater intentions to leave the IT organization than the IT professionals. Additionally, the study examined the differences of the job characteristics and job outcomes among transactional, transformational, and professional advisory work groups. The professionals and advisory group differed from the other groups in terms of feedback from the job, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions.Research limitations/implications– The findings are based on a small sample. However, it highlights some unique differences in how IT and non-IT job occupants perceive job characteristics and job outcomes.Originality/value– This study compares job characteristics and job outcomes of IT and non-IT job occupations in the same IT work environment.

Finishing Degrees and Finding Jobs: US Higher Education and the Flow of Foreign IT Workers

The rising importance of information technology (IT) occupations in the US economy has been accompanied by an expansion in the representation of high-skill, foreign-born IT workers. To illustrate, the share of the foreign born in IT occupations increased from about 15.5% to about 31.5% between 1993 and 2010, with this increased representation particularly marked among those younger than 45. This analysis focuses on understanding the role that US higher education and immigration policy plays in this transformation. A degree from a US college/university is an important pathway to participation in the US IT labor market, and the foreign born who obtain US degree credentials are particularly likely to remain in the United States. Many workers from abroad, including countries like India and China where wages in IT fields lag those in the United States, receive a substantial return to finding employment in the United States, even as temporary work visa policies may limit their entry. Limits on temporary work visas, which are particularly binding for those educated abroad, likely increase the attractiveness of degree attainment from US colleges and universities as a pathway to explore opportunities in the US labor market in IT.

Surprising Recent Immigrant Wage Growth: Evidence from Information Technology Occupations

Information technology (IT) occupations have seen high rates of employment growth in recent years and employers have relied on foreign born workers to help fill labor shortages (Mithas and Lucas,Management Science, 2010). By 2011, about 21 % of IT workers in five of the largest IT occupations in the U.S. were foreign born (Bureau of the Census, American Community Survey, 2011). Our research explores the relative wage and salary earnings of college educated immigrant IT workers from 2006 to 2011. For several reasons, we initially expected that immigrant earnings in IT occupations would be less than native earnings. First, many immigrants, especially immigrant IT workers, have temporary visas (Kerr and Lincoln, Journal of Labor Economics, 2010). Second, recessions more adversely affect immigrants than natives (Orrenius and Zavodny, American Economic Review, 2010). Third, many immigrants may initially lack English language proficiencies (Chiswick and Miller, Journal of Population Economics, 2002). These factors suggest that immigrant IT workers should have lower earnings and be more adversely affected during cyclical downturns than native ITworkers. Surprisingly, our study shows that immigrants in IT occupations actually earned higher wages than natives in 2006, and that this advantage was maintained during the recession. Data are drawn from the American Community Survey (ACS) and includes 3 years to represent three phases of the current business cycle: 2006 is a boom year, 2009 is a recession year, and 2011 is a recovery year. The sample consists of 56,784 native and foreign born college graduates who are between 25 and 65 years of age and working full time in five IT occupations: computer systems analysts and computer scientists; operations and systems researchers and analysts; computer and peripheral equipment operators; programmers of machine tools; and computer and peripheral equipment operators. Excluded from the sample were those with imputed incomes, those not working at least 35 hours and those employed less than 50 weeks during the past year. Atl Econ J (2014) 42:115–116 DOI 10.1007/s11293-014-9411-9

Working hard with gender

PurposeManual trades and information technology (IT) are male‐dominated occupations and as such cultivate unique forms of hegemonic masculinity. Women entering these occupations represent a kind of crisis to this gender order in the workplace, making the experiences of these women a useful way of studying how gender regimes are maintained and may be challenged at work. The aim of this paper is to examine how women found doing gender in the male dominated workplaces became a kind of work in itself.Design/methodology/approachA life history framework was used for this research, in which 15 women from manual trades and 15 women from IT occupations were interviewed. The in‐depth qualitative method allowed the participants the time and space to communicate the contradictions they experienced doing their gender and doing their gender at work.FindingsThe effort expended because the participants were women and because they were a minority was experienced both as an intense pressure and as significant to their success in their occupations. This indicates that gendered work outside of the formal duties of a job makes the work of those in a gender minority particularly strenuous. This understanding of gender at work as work is important to understanding how efforts to address gender equity in workplaces must work beyond quotas and policy and also address embodied gendered cultures.Originality/valueWhile women working in male dominated cultures are often studied in terms of the challenges they face, from this research these challenges are framed as a kind of gendered work in itself. This work is often invisible, usually emotion work and mostly unrecognised. Highlighting the nature of this gendered labour and the pressures it places on women in male dominated work reframes what it means to work and the importance of these invisible forms of labour to maintaining successful production relations.

Real World Project: Integrating the Classroom, External Business Partnerships and Professional Organizations

Introduction The rapid changes in technology as well as the struggling economy demand that organizations efficiently utilize their resources in order to remain competitive. These constraints translate into an increasingly competitive and discriminating hiring process for recent college graduates (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2009). A college graduate must possess more than the technical skills acquired through his or her degree program. There is an increasing need for managerial and professional employees with a range of personal competencies that extend beyond the exhibition of technical (Brown & Scase, 1994, p. ix). The literature strongly suggests that many graduates with IS degrees lack soft skills (Bullen, Abraham, Gallagher, Simon, & Zwieg, 2009; Russell, Russell, & Tastle, 2005). These soft skills generally include, but are not limited to project management, teamwork, presentation and communication. Some universities have attempted to make curriculum changes to strengthen these skills through adding new courses or programs (Hanna & Sullivan, 2005; Russell et al., 2005; Seethamraju, 2007). Since many IS departments may not have the flexibility to expand their programs, there is a need to address these issues within their current curriculum. Education must go beyond the classroom in order to prepare students for today's job market. We introduce a pedagogical model that integrates real world projects with business partnerships and professional organizations in order to facilitate and reinforce technical, communication, presentation, teamwork and project management skills. Background IS Skills Gap The IS model curriculum (Davis, Gorgone, Couger, Feinstein, & Longenecker, 1997; Gorgone, Davis, Valacich, Topi, Feinstein, & Longenecker, 2003; Topi et al., 2010) has evolved over the years to recognize the changing nature of information systems. The curricula guides acknowledge each university's responsibility to adjust the model curriculum to meet the needs of its target job market. Matching skills learned to employer needs is widely accepted as a means to review and adjust the IS curriculum. In order to understand and properly align IS curriculum, researchers have studied the effect of the ever changing Information Technology (IT) industry and how it relates to the preparation of future IT workers. The concern that curriculums match industry needs has led to research that involves the in-depth study of business needs based on informal focus group discussions and follow up surveys of IT professionals (D. M. S. Lee, Trauth, & Farwell, 1995). D. M. S. Lee et al.'s (1995) study found that the lower-level IT jobs are rapidly disappearing and the requirements for IT professionals are becoming more demanding in multiple dimensions, particularly in the areas of business functional knowl edge and interpersonal/management skills. While new jobs require some technical competencies they also require the soft skills necessary to apply information technology to solve business problems. Other studies have also surveyed IT professionals to determine job-hiring expectations for either specific IT occupations or within a specific region in order to better map the IS curriculum with employers needs (Banerjee & Lin 2006; Downey, McMurtrey, & Zeltmann, 2008; Janicki, Kline, Gowan, & Konopaske, 2004; Janicki, Lenox, Logan, & Woratschek, 2008). All of these studies confirmed the findings of D. M. S. Lee et al. (1995). The consistent theme in the studies is the need to hire IT professionals that possess a blend of technical and soft skills. These soft skills include, but are not limited to, the ability to communicate, solve business problems and have some project management expertise (S. M. Lee & Lee, 2006). While many of these soft skills have been taught in the classroom, techniques, beyond classroom activities, have been recognized as essential ingredients to enhance learning outcomes (Kamoun & Selim, 2007, p. …

IT occupational culture: the cultural fit and commitment of new information technologists

PurposeAs the shortage in the information technology (IT) workforce continues, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the cultural dimensions of IT occupations that attract or drive away potential IT professionals. In the present study, the authors take an occupational culture approach to study the cultural fit of newcomers to IT occupations and to understand how young people perceive the culture embedded in this occupational community as they become part of it.Design/methodology/approachThe authors take a sequential mixed methodology approach composed of two phases, one qualitative and the other quantitative. In the first phase of the study, nine focus groups and 27 interviews with college students were conducted to learn about the challenges and barriers that they personally experienced while becoming part of the IT occupational community. The second phase used results from the first qualitative phase to design a survey instrument that was administered to 215 IT college students who were currently or had recently been involved in IT work experience to evaluate their cultural fit to the IT occupational culture (ITOC) and its influence on their occupational commitment.FindingsThe results suggest that women, ethnic minorities and those with less work experience encountered greater difficulty fitting into different dimensions of ITOC. The results also showed that cultural fit is a good predictor of occupational commitment and affective commitment in particular.Practical implicationsAn initial survey instrument was developed to measure cultural fit to ITOC. This instrument can be further modified and adapted to be used in the hiring process by HR departments to measure cultural fit to organizational subcultures, such as the one in the IT occupational group.Originality/valueThis paper constitutes an important contribution to the rigor and development of the theory and research of human resources in information technologies.

EXAMINING THE OBSTACLES TO BROADENING PARTICIPATION IN COMPUTING: EVIDENCE FROM A SURVEY OF PROFESSIONAL WORKERS

I. INTRODUCTION Insuring that the nation has a sufficient number of trained information technology (IT) professionals and that the composition of this group reflects a diversity of backgrounds, especially in terms of race and gender, has been widely recognized as important issue (Gilbert, 2006). Despite recent growth in the off shoring of some IT work, employment growth has remained strong, yet enrollment in computer science programs has declined, and the number of women and underrepresented minorities in the IT workforce has remained frustratingly low. Encouraging more women and minorities to choose IT careers would help raise both overall numbers in the field and the diversity of the resulting workforce. Expanding the domestic labor supply that is available to U.S. employers is a major reason for encouraging female entry into IT that has been identified in the literature. Bartol and Aspray (2006) found that employers who struggled to find enough qualified IT workers at the height of the IT boom around 1999 could have solved these labor shortage problems had they done a better job of including women and minorities in the IT workforce. Rather than adopting strategies that moved women toward parity in IT, U.S. industry resorted to importing temporary foreign workers to fill the open positions. The current politically controversial trend of offshoring technical jobs is also primarily being driven by efforts to gain access to a labor force that would allow firms to hire adequate numbers of qualified workers. As Bartol and Aspray (2006, p. 408) argued, however, an increase in the domestic IT labor pool by representative participation by women and minorities would go a long way toward meeting that end. In addition to the labor supply issue, diversity in the IT workforce is important since a more gender-balanced workforce is more likely to understand the concerns of increasingly diverse customer base. As Wulf (1999) argued, ... those differences in experience are the 'gene pool' from which creativity springs. In the past few years, a number of pilot efforts have been undertaken to address a variety of perceived obstacles that are believed to discourage these underrepresented groups. These policy initiatives have focused on a variety of avenues through which the problem of under representation might be addressed including labor and workforce issues, immigration policy, and research funding initiatives. Policy solutions designed to increase the diversity of the IT workforce must, however, be informed by a clear understanding of the underlying reasons for the limited numbers of women and minorities in IT careers. With this in mind, we report here a number of results derived from a recently completed study of current IT professionals that help to explain the reasons for the relatively small number of women in IT occupations. Our data suggest two important conclusions. First, our evidence leads us to reject the argument that the demanding nature of IT careers is the primary barrier for increasing the number of women. Weinberger's (2004) survey of college women, for example, found that 30%--40% of the women surveyed believed that IT careers would be incompatible with raising children because of demanding schedules. Our first conclusion suggests that this is not a sufficient explanation. Women do report that family responsibilities conflict with work more than men, but we find that women in IT report no greater conflict than in comparable careers that have much higher proportions of women workers. Thus, while work-family conflicts may discourage some women from pursuing demanding careers, they do not offer a mechanism to explain the relatively small numbers of women in IT careers. Our second conclusion is that the concept of occupational personality can help to account for the relative shortage of women in IT careers. These findings suggest several strategies for increasing gender diversity that we discuss in our conclusion. …

Career Development From Adolescence Through Emerging Adulthood Insights From Information Technology Occupations.

Career development theories suggest that social-contextual experiences are influential in individuals' career interests, aspirations, and skill development and may be a source of gender and ethnic differences in certain career fields. In this mixed methods study, we examine the supportive and obstructive career-related experiences of 13 men and 13 women (modal age 25). Interviews focused primarily on the pathway toward or away from an information technology (IT) career. Thematic coding indicated that parents were mostly supportive, while experiences in school and work occasionally made individuals reconsider their career plans. Social influences often changed developmentally as participants entered full-time jobs. Gendered participation in IT was often attributed to women's perception that it is a male-oriented field.

Returning to IT: Employment and Development after a Career Break in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT The paper examines the career experiences of women in the United Kingdom who seek re-entry to information technology employment following a career break. Using empirical data from qualitative interviews, the study finds evidence of barriers and limited opportunities. The study shows that women returners are not a homogeneous group and that the length of their career break appears to play a key role in the re-entry process: the longer the break, the greater the impact on career choices. Linked to this, the study shows that women seeking re-entry face a lack of support mechanisms such as flexi-time schemes and part-time work, and receive insufficient training. A case study of an exemplary organisation shows that information technology companies could introduce employment schemes to support women's re-entry and thus their retention in fast-changing information technology occupations, although the pressures of client-based work is seen as a barrier. Implications for policy makers, employers and industry associations are discussed.

Barriers women face in information technology careers

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to determine if perceptions that women and men hold toward careers in information technology (IT) and toward women working in IT create potential barriers that may prevent women managers from pursuing careers in IT.Design/methodology/approachA field study was designed to test the hypotheses. The subjects were graduate students pursuing either an MBA or IT management degree.FindingsThe results revealed that males had greater self‐efficacy for IT occupations, greater passion for computing, and less positive attitudes toward capabilities of women in IT. Our prediction that career barriers would intensify for women who chose an IT management option was not supported. These findings suggest that traditional work role expectations concerning women's efficacy for careers in IT still persist.Research limitations/implicationsThis research was limited by its focus on subjects in the early stages of a management career. To gain a better understanding of the barriers that women face in IT career fields, longitudinal studies are needed to track these barriers throughout the career development process.Practical implicationsIf organisations want to attract, retain, and advance women managers in IT fields, they must proactively address gender role biases and create work environments that build self‐efficacy expectations for women, as well as for men.Originality/valueMuch of the research on career barriers women face in IT is based on qualitative studies and anecdotal evidence. This study provides empirical evidence that barriers still exist for women in IT despite the enhanced demand for IT professionals and managers over the past decade.

Latent Class Analysis of 1997 NSF Survey Data on Science PHDs

Summary The field of Information Technology (IT) has provided extraordinary job growth in the United States over the last two decades; however, women and some minority groups are severely underrepresented in IT occupations, especially in management positions. These groups also on average receive lower salaries than their counterparts. The U.S. National Science Foundation's SESTAT database is created from biennial nationally representative surveys of U.S. scientists and engineers. SESTAT provides detailed information, such as employment history, educational background, and demographic characteristics. These data are analyzed here using latent class analysis, which is an exploratory technique that can be used to cluster cases based on categorical variables. The data are from the 1997 Survey of Doctoral Recipients. The subset of respondents received Ph.D.'s between 1990 and 1996 in either than physical or biological sciences or in engineering and work at higher educational institutions. There are a few significant differences between men and women in desired work activities, job search resources, and adequacy of doctoral training. There are many large, significant differences in limitations when searching for a job, work activities, and family and career status. Latent class analysis helped identify important subgroups of females and males based on clustering simultaneously on several categorical variables.

Constructing the information society: women, information technology, and design

For the first time in history, women have the opportunity to play a major and visible role in a social transformation of potentially monumental proportions. The extensive reach and penetration of information technology into virtually every area of society creates enormous opportunities for women. But women's lack of representation in IT design roles may prevent them from capitalizing on these opportunities. Most current discussion and analysis focuses on the increasing numbers of women as users of information technology with great emphasis on their use of the Internet and World Wide Web. Comparatively little attention has been given to the potential role women might play as designers in an information-based society. As the data in this paper clearly indicate, women are poorly represented in the sector that constitutes the growth engine of the U.S. economy and that bears primary responsibility for the scientific and technological development of an Information Society. The human capital requirements of the Information Society demonstrate the need for women to strengthen their participation as experts, owners and designers of information technologies. This paper argues that stronger representation by women in technical roles not only would help to redress a troubling human capital deficit, but is highly likely to modify and expand the range of technological applications, products, standards and practices to benefit all of society. On the importance of women as scientific and technical experts, see [1,2]. To develop this argument, the paper surveys across several policy areas to identify a central challenge that does not neatly fit into established policy categories. The first section of this paper distinguishes between the types of contributions that may be made by users of information technology versus its designers. The second section surveys current participation rates of women in IT-related fields within education and industry in order to gauge the near-term supply of women designers and experts. The third section argues, by analogy to the fields of medicine and psychology, that the degree of participation by women is likely to have a notable effect on professional practice and technological developments within the fields that constitute information technology. The current economy presents a stellar opportunity for women to assume leadership roles in research and development of information technologies and applications. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, use of the Internet, World Wide Web and other digital technologies continues to proliferate. The U.S. economy and its labor needs have shifted radically producing a serious deficit of IT workers. The U.S. Department of Commerce [3, p. 4] uses the following definitions and categories to denote information technology and related occupations: computer scientists, computer engineers, systems analysts and computer programmers. The classification is based on categories used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Demand for workers able to develop, apply and use these technologies extends beyond the computer and software industries into service industries, including health care, manufacturing, transportation, government and education. Information technology accounted for more than a third of the nation's real economic growth from 1995 to 1997 [3, p. 5]. If not addressed, labor market shortages in information technology related occupations are estimated to diminish national productivity, the development of new products and services, economic growth, and national competitiveness [4]. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that approximately 137 800 new jobs in information technology occupations have been and will be produced each year from 1996 to 2006. 1 This figure includes both newly created jobs and the replacement of workers who are leaving the field. See U.S. Department of Commerce, June 1999 [3, p. 25]. 1 The U.S. educational system awarded only 24 098 bachelor's degrees and 9658 associate's degrees in computer and information sciences in 1995 and 1996 [5, Tables 248 and 253, pp. 280, 286]. Immigration policy has recently been modified, with passage of the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998, to meet the current shortfall of IT workers [6]. Firms seek to employ skilled workers from abroad, notably from India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and South Africa. But while the U.S. government has temporarily raised the quota of skilled non-immigrant visas to accommodate increased demand, the legislation includes a sunset provision that mandates lowering the cap by 2002. Even if immigration levels are not reduced, evidence of a global deficit of information technology workers (see [7] for one example) is likely to constrain the ability of firms to use immigration policy and global outsourcing of IT activities [4, p. 2]. The U.S. political economy requires modernization of domestic employment and education policies to sustain growth in the information society.