The Performance of IT Professionals: the Difference that Makes a Difference

摘要

Information Technology (IT) organizations are expected to develop and deploy solutions that improve firm effectiveness and/or provide competitive advantage. Despite clear evidence that the role of IT is increasingly important to organizational processes and competitive strategy (Kaarst-Brown and Guzman 2005) only 25% of global business executives claim satisfaction with the performance of their IT investments (Compass Group Survey 1999) and 75% of global companies admit to wasting one in three dollars spent on IT development and implementation (Ellis 2009). A recent survey of 3,000 US government and commercial organizations (Lynch 2009) revealed nearly a quarter of IT projects are cancelled before completion and 44% are delivered over budget and/or miss their schedules by as much as 120%. As the role of IT has evolved, new roles have emerged requiring specific skills and competencies to manage and perform work expected to provide competitive advantage for the firm (Applegate and Elam 1992). IT managers and individual contributors (ICs) work in an unprecedented environment of sourced and insourced teams (Pinnington and Woolcock 1995), global virtual teams (Casey et al. 2007) and contingent workforces (Newton et al. 2007) resulting in shifting requirements for IT professionals.