HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY: NEW DIRECTIONS IN IT SUPPORT

摘要

For organizations to derive performance benefits, competitive advantage or simply an adequate return on theirIT investments, they must devise ways to ensure that technology is used as required, accurately, creatively andinnovatively by individual users. In this paper, we argue that one way in which users develop competence andskill is through their interactions with the IT support function or help desk. Help desks serve as one of the mostintensively used organizational mechanisms for improving users? knowledge about technology and how to useit (Nambisan et al. 1999). Using a foundation of knowledge transfer and learning, this paper develops asituated learning two-level framework that integrates cognitive and social cognitive theory to explain how andwhy the dyadic relationship between users and the IT support personnel results in important performanceoutcomes for both parties.