Information Technology Workforce Research Articles

Omnificence or Differentiation? An Empirical Study of Knowledge Structure and Career Development of IT Workers

This study explores the crucial yet underexamined labor supply side of the information technology (IT) job market, focusing on how IT professionals can strategically manage their knowledge diversity structures for career advancement. By introducing and operationalizing two novel metrics—knowledge omnificence and knowledge differentiation—the research examines their impact on IT workers’ salaries and job security. Through an extensive analysis of IT career data spanning from 2000 to 2016, the study reveals that moderate levels of knowledge omnificence and differentiation lead to the most favorable economic outcomes for IT professionals. Specifically, knowledge omnificence is associated with higher salary potential and career mobility, whereas knowledge differentiation is linked to enhanced job security. These findings provide actionable insights for IT workers aiming to optimize their career trajectories. Additionally, the study highlights the role of these knowledge structures in reducing gender disparities in the IT labor market, with women particularly benefiting from increased knowledge omnificence and differentiation. The research underscores the importance of strategic knowledge management for IT workers and offers valuable guidance for firms and policymakers to support a dynamic and equitable IT workforce.

Attracting IT Talent: A Kano Analysis of Employer Attributes

Recruiting information technology (IT) talent remains a pressing issue for employers. Organizations therefore work on enhancing and highlighting their attractiveness. Drawing on the theory of attractive quality, the Kano model, we empirically investigate attributes that specifically attract IT talents in a recruiting context. Based on 30 interviews and a survey of 301 IT professionals and IT students, we identify and evaluate 24 attractiveness attributes that are further classified according to the nature of their role in attracting IT talent. The attribute identification and evaluation involve several steps including categorization, significance, and verification testing. Our research introduces Kano analysis as a useful tool to elicit nontrivial preference portfolios relevant to the IT job market. The empirical results add to the IT workforce literature and offer a concrete classification of what attributes employers should or even need to provide to recruit these scarce talents. The analysis also discloses differences in the survey participants' work experience and gender. Organizations can use the method to develop more effective candidate communication and reveal weak spots in their employer branding efforts.

The Development of Human Resources in Information Technology in Vietnam from 2006 to 2020

This article aims to shed light on the development of Vietnam's information technology human resources between 2006 and 2020 by analyzing the guidelines and policies set by the Communist Party and the Government of Vietnam, as well as their training activities, talent attraction, compensation and international cooperation policies. Information technology (IT) and IT human resources play a crucial role in Vietnam's socio-economic development, particularly in the rapidly evolving context of the information and digital revolutions. Since 2006, as Vietnam entered a phase of industrialization and modernization tied to the growth of a knowledge-based economy, the Party and the government have increasingly recognized the importance of applying and developing IT across all fields. In this regard, IT human resources are key to promoting the role of information technology in the country’s development strategy. Recently, Vietnam has emerged as a significant player in the global IT industry but workforce shortages have challenged the country’s long-term objective of becoming a tech hub in Southeast Asia.

REVIEW OF WORKFORCE UPSKILLING INITIATIVES FOR EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN IT

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of workforce upskilling initiatives for emerging technologies in the Information Technology (IT) sector, with the primary objective of identifying effective strategies to prepare professionals for the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Employing a systematic literature review and content analysis, the research scrutinizes various upskilling programs, focusing on their design, implementation, and outcomes. Data sources include peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, selected based on criteria that ensure relevance and timeliness to the current IT context. Key findings reveal the critical need for anticipating technological trends to align workforce capabilities with future demands, highlighting the significance of personalized and experiential learning pathways. The study emphasizes the strategic role of upskilling in bridging the digital divide, advocating for inclusive and accessible learning opportunities to cultivate a diverse and globally competitive workforce. Recommendations for stakeholders center around adopting flexible learning models, fostering industry-academia partnerships, and emphasizing the development of both technical and soft skills. Finally, the study underscores the imperative for a proactive and collaborative approach to IT education and workforce development. By integrating advanced learning technologies and inclusive strategies, stakeholders can ensure the IT workforce remains agile and prepared to contribute innovatively in the face of technological advancements. This framework sets the foundation for future research and policy-making, aiming to enhance the resilience and diversity of the IT sector globally.
 Keywords: Workforce Upskilling, Emerging Technologies, IT Education, Inclusive Learning Strategies.

Ageism: The New Menace for the IT Workforce in India & How to Tackle It

This paper delves into the phenomenon of ageism, characterized by the manifestation of adverse attitudes and behaviours directed towards oneself or others based on age. The repercussions of ageism include stereotypes and discriminatory conduct within interpersonal relationships. The primary aim of this conceptual paper is to explore ageism within the Information Technology (IT) sector in India and propose strategies to mitigate its detrimental effects. Despite the pervasive existence of ageism in the Indian IT industry, disproportionately affecting older employees, it can serve as a catalyst for fostering a culture of continual upskilling and reskilling among this demographic. Policies focused at promoting active ageing by using an inclusive approach towards intergenerational contact among all age groups can help reduce the negative impacts of ageism.

Are IT Workers from Mars? An Examination of Their National Culture Dimensions

The information technology (IT) workforce is characterized by several unique and contextual factors, such as the technology, the occupation itself, and the human factors. Among the human factors, global information systems (IS) studies have examined the role of national culture to explain many workforce differences and nuances across nations. In such cross-cultural research, IS researchers have primarily utilized the published scores of national culture dimensions as provided by the preeminent social psychologist and culture scholar Geert Hofstede and have applied them to various IT populations within a country. Given that the IT profession is unique in many respects, and there is cultural heterogeneity within a country, our study embarked on independently measuring and verifying the national culture values of IT employees in 37 countries. By using the original Hofstede scales, scores were obtained on five national culture dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and long-term orientation. We found significant differences between the national culture scores of IT employees and those available in the literature for the general population. Our results are novel and have profound significance. There are major implications for both past and future studies in cross-cultural research as well as for practitioners who interpret and utilize the findings of such research.

Research on the Items of Importance and Satisfaction for Employability in the Korean Information Communication Technology Sector

This study discusses the employability of the workforce in relation to information communication technology. There is a difference in understanding in terms of items of importance/satisfaction during/after employment processes when considering organizations related to the information technology workforce. An empirical analysis of Korean employability based on literature from Asia was conducted. It indicated that differences in the perception of the 12 items comprising importance and satisfaction related to employability could potentially lead to job mismatch. We acquired an adequate sample of 296 respondents, consisting of various organizational employees. The sample was balanced in terms of gender and large or small/medium organizations. After establishing the rank of preferences among items, a difference analysis between/among groups through demographic variables was conducted. As a result, the need for additional disciplines or courses, the arrangement of preferred rank, and methods for enhancing skills from university or education/practice institutes for “interpersonal or team-working skills” and to “communicate effectively” with a higher rank among the general skills of importance/satisfaction were derived. Therefore, technology did not replace human personalities, communication skills, and human attributes such as human cooperation. This study can help address labor shortages and support sustainable employment in organizations, even if an empirical test is rare compared to descriptive statistical analyses.

Cancer risk in information technology workers: a UK Biobank study.

The information technology (IT) workforce has been growing more rapidly than others, with occupational health (OH) risks of sedentary behaviour, physical inactivity and poor diet, yet studies of their non-communicable disease risk, notably cancer, are lacking. To investigate cancer risk in IT workers compared to others in employment and the nine major Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) groups. We evaluated incident diagnosed cancers in the UK Biobank cohort through national cancer registry linkage. Cox proportional hazard regression models, with 15-year follow-up, were used to compare incident cancer risk among IT workers with all other employed participants and with the nine major SOC groups. Overall, 10 517 (4%) employed participants were IT workers. Adjusting for confounders, IT workers had a slightly lower cancer incidence compared to all other employed participants (Model 2: hazard ratio = 0.91, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.83-1.01). Compared to the nine major SOC groups, they had a similar (Major Groups 2, 5 and 8) or lower (Major Groups 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9) cancer incidence. Despite their occupational risks of sedentary behaviour, poor diet and physical inactivity, IT workers do not have an increased cancer incidence compared to all other employed participants and the nine major SOC groups. This study paves the way for large, longitudinal health outcome studies of this under-researched and rapidly growing occupational group.

Rural health information technology and informatics workforce assessment: a pilot study

Rural health information technology and informatics workforce assessment: a pilot study

A model for measuring multi‐concern assurance of critical infrastructure control systems

AbstractDigital transformation of engineering practice, paradigms, processes, and workforce engender agreement uncertainty among professionals, particularly in the critical industry control system field. Control systems are susceptible to cyber‐mediated changes that can uniquely affect the control of the physical world from data‐centric information systems. Change to the system can be introduced by any proposed or forced alteration that affects the acceptability, suitability, feasibility, or resiliency to perform its intended mission, either positively or negatively. The potential impact of the cybersecurity threat on control systems is difficult to quantify. Agreement among professionals about decision authority and Command and Control (C2) over this threat is even more challenging to quantify. Understanding what cybersecurity entails still needs to be widely understood by the critical infrastructure control system workforce, and the control system assets are not widely understood by the Information Technology (IT) workforce. This research introduces a model and methodology for measuring multi‐concern assurance through the statistical uncertainty analysis of Likert semantic differential scales. The model addresses agreement in priority, the lack of which means there might be competing aims, competing spending, and competing focus on different aspects of the cybersecurity governance or policy as examples. The outcome identifies where different types of professionals do not agree about cybersecurity readiness and best practices for critical infrastructure control systems.

Breaking barriers through the digital workforce: Providing IT training and employment pipelines for ex-offenders

With incarcerations on a steady increase, the United States is positioned to be the country with the highest incarceration rates in the world. A large majority of those incarcerated will be released back into the community, and represent a significant portion of the working-age population. Every year, incarcerated individuals are released with the expectation of reintegrating back into society, but are often met with opposition when looking for employment due to a lack of skills and the stigma of a criminal history. Lack of employment is one of the primary causes of recidivism. With rapid advancements and the pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives, offering Information Technology (IT) training to previously incarcerated individuals is a logical strategy to increase access to more stable opportunities and meet the growing demand for more IT professionals. Access to IT training would help increase skill sets, knowledge, and competencies of previously incarcerated workers in preparation for re-entering the workforce. This research applies Social Exchange Theory to examine approaches to managing technology to increase the domestic skilled IT workforce in more effective ways; while also increasing diversity and access to opportunities for those who were incarcerated.

What Motivates First-generation College Students to Consider an IT Career? An Integrative Perspective

A career in information technology (IT) presents a viable source of economic advancement for college graduates, yet ethnic minority students remain underrepresented in the IT workforce. Such underrepresentation is often exacerbated by their first-generation student (FGS) status. It, however, remains unclear what causes the discrepancy between FGSs and their counterparts in terms of their choice to enter into an IT career. To address this gap, this study aims to reveal the factors motivating FGSs to consider an IT career and examines the association of influencing factors with personal and demographic factors (gender, race, ethnicity). This qualitative research overlays capital theory and social cognitive career theory to develop an integrated sensitizing framework and draws on individual difference theory in interpreting the findings. Our analysis of the open-ended narrative responses of 193 surveys collected from a minority-serving university revealed 10 key factors influencing IT career choice. A theoretical model incorporating individual differences, generational status, and environmental influences is proposed to advance the discussion of influencing factors in IT career choice toward further theory building and empirical testing. The paper concludes with implications for motivating the IT career choice of the ethnic minority, first-generation student population.

Career Satisfaction in Maximising Professionals of Indian IT Industry: Mediating Roles of Contrasting Responses Based on Counterfactual Reasoning

This study conceptualises career maximisation and its consequences in the Indian Information Technology (IT) workforce, a globally significant non-Western talent pool. It examined how maximising tendency in career decision-making (MT-CD) mediated career satisfaction through two contrasting responses based on counterfactual reasoning―career regret (dysfunctional) and career adaptability (functional). The study comprised of two parts. In Study 1, scales for MT-CD and career regret were developed and initially validated using a 172 respondents’ dataset. In Study 2, data from 434 respondents were analysed for psychometric evaluation and further validation of scales along with determining hypothesised relationships. Two dimensions of MT-CD were identified―‘state of internal career ambiguity’ and ‘striving for career excellence’. Both attributes produced career regret (an aggregated measure of ‘corporate regrets’, ‘career choice regrets’ and ‘developmental regrets’ dimensions), decreasing career satisfaction. Only ‘striving for career excellence’ led to career adaptability, which subsequently increased career satisfaction. Altogether, career regret competed with career adaptability, supressing its positive indirect effect on maximising ITPs’ career satisfaction. This study expands the current empirical research on career maximisation into non-Western contexts, adding unique knowledge to the Indian IT workforce’s vocational literature.

Turnover in Japanese IT Professionals: Antecendants and Nuances

The Japanese information technology (IT) workplace is unique compared to that of other nations. IT represents a large sector of the country’s economy, and organizations need to develop proactive approaches to retain their IT workforce. In order to manage employee turnover, they need to understand the distinctive factors influencing employee turnover intention, as turnover intention is known to be a reliable predictor of actual turnover. In this study, a model was constructed and tested with data collected from 284 Japanese IT professionals. Our findings show that the effects of work exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and friendship networks on turnover intention are fully mediated through job satisfaction. Work-home conflict has no impact on job satisfaction. The strength of the relationships is stronger for younger than for older organizations. Furthermore, individualistic factors (i.e., work exhaustion and personal accomplishment) have a stronger impact on job satisfaction than collectivistic factors (i.e., work-home conflict and friendship networks). These results show the fragility of the notion of long-term employment, which is supposed to be embraced within the entire Japanese work culture.

Integrated Electronic Health Record System in a Tertiary Care Centre: A Single Centre Implementation Experience.

electronic health record; hospital; Nepal; prescriptions.

The role of infrastructure, socio-economic development, and food security to mitigate the loss of natural disasters.

This study shows the impact of risk (hazard, exposure, and vulnerability) and resilience (infrastructure, information and communication technology, institutional quality, food security, women empowerment, economic performance, human capital, emergency workforce, and social capital) indicators on losses due to natural disasters in 24 high-income, 24 upper-middle-income, 30 lower-middle-income, and 12 low-income countries from 1995 to 2019. It develops a new disaster risk index and disaster resilience index using standard index-making procedure (indicators selection, winsorization, normalization, aggregation). The generalized additive modeling was used to explore the non-linear relationship between response and explanatory variables. There exists a positive link between damage due to natural disasters and hazard index (all panels) and exposure index in high-income countries. The decrease in damage due to natural disasters was observed due to an increase in infrastructure (upper-middle-, lower-middle-, and low-income countries), information and communication technology (high-income countries), institutional quality (high-income countries), food security (high- and upper-middle-income countries), women empowerment (lower-middle-income countries), economic performance (high- and low-income countries), human capital (low-income countries), and emergency workforce (upper-middle and lower-middle-income countries). The governments should enhance disaster resilience through Sendai Framework, having seven targets and four priority areas to increase disaster resilience.

Understanding enterprise data warehouses to support clinical and translational research: enterprise information technology relationships, data governance, workforce, and cloud computing.

Among National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs, effective approaches for enterprise data warehouses for research (EDW4R) development, maintenance, and sustainability remain unclear. The goal of this qualitative study was to understand CTSA EDW4R operations within the broader contexts of academic medical centers and technology. We performed a directed content analysis of transcripts generated from semistructured interviews with informatics leaders from 20 CTSA hubs. Respondents referred to services provided by health system, university, and medical school information technology (IT) organizations as "enterprise information technology (IT)." Seventy-five percent of respondents stated that the team providing EDW4R service at their hub was separate from enterprise IT; strong relationships between EDW4R teams and enterprise IT were critical for success. Managing challenges of EDW4R staffing was made easier by executive leadership support. Data governance appeared to be a work in progress, as most hubs reported complex and incomplete processes, especially for commercial data sharing. Although nearly all hubs (n = 16) described use of cloud computing for specific projects, only 2 hubs reported using a cloud-based EDW4R. Respondents described EDW4R cloud migration facilitators, barriers, and opportunities. Descriptions of approaches to how EDW4R teams at CTSA hubs work with enterprise IT organizations, manage workforces, make decisions about data, and approach cloud computing provide insights for institutions seeking to leverage patient data for research. Identification of EDW4R best practices is challenging, and this study helps identify a breadth of viable options for CTSA hubs to consider when implementing EDW4R services.

Computing, Girls and Education: What we need to know to change how girls think about information technology.

Despite significant efforts and many intervention programs over the years to encourage girls to study computing, we continue to see a declining interest. Girls’ lack of engagement with technology at school is resulting in fewer women entering the Information Technology (IT) workforce. Our research investigated whether a long-term intervention program with a specifically designed school-based curriculum could change girls’ minds about computing generally and increase their confidence and interest in an IT career. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from girls and teachers before, during, and after this program was implemented. A conceptual model of the school-based influences on girls’ attitude was developed from the literature and used to explore the data. Findings from this four-year project added rich insights and resulted in a comprehensive model of ‘Factors that Influence Girls’ Attitude to IT.’ This research demonstrates that a carefully designed IT curriculum, delivered in single-sex classes, reinforced by opportunities to interact with role models, and timetabled in regular class time, can and does change girls’ attitudes to IT. We also found that the students reported improved confidence and increased interest in IT. We posit that our refined model of ‘Factors that Influence Girls’ Attitude to IT’ is a valuable reference tool. Teachers, academics and professionals who are implementing programs to promote IT to girls can use it.

A Study on Stress Management and Health Impacts on Women Employees of it Sectors in Chennai City

Women are playing diverse roles in the family and in the work place. Women experience stress and many health impacts in both sides from psychological tension and physical harassment at workplaces, apart from the common job stress. Information Technology (IT) companies is one of the significant employee generating industry in the worldwide condition where the people are participating. In these companies women advanced into the corporate workforce, however without need of full improvement of their abilities and ascend for authority positions because of stress. Globalization of economy have constrained our IT workforce to concern more in winning the ability individual and India’s informed IT proficient women are a noteworthy resource that should never again be underestimated and under-used. This paper depends on discoveries from research studies on Indian Information Technology Industry. It gives a diagram of the difficulties and stress observed by women who are working in IT companies associations. Here discussion is about what changes are required to manage stress among women and what is being done to get the prescribed procedures for Information Technology industry in India. The present paper features the adapting systems that can be chosen to additionally precede corporate journey to gender inclusion and the development of women in the society.

Characteristics of the Health Information Technology Workforce in Georgia

Characteristics of the Health Information Technology Workforce in Georgia