The IS Manager: A Study of Critical Professional Activities and Skills/Knowledge

Transcription

1 The IS Manager: A Study of Critical Professional Activities and Skills/Knowledge Jen-Her Wu a, Yi-Cheng Chen a, b, Jack Chang a, c a Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University jhwu@mis.nsysu.edu.tw b Department of Business Administration, Meiho Institute of Technology bear@mail.meiho.edu.tw c Department of Management Information System, Walton Advanced Engineering, Inc. jackchang@walton.com.tw Abstract This paper utilizes the activity competency model (ACM) to investigate the perceived importance of professional activities and skills/knowledge required of three levels of information system (IS) managers from two types of industries. Carrying an activity out involves the use of a number of different skills and knowledge. The critical activities and the required skills/knowledge for each level of IS management are identified. Our findings indicate that the perceived importance of IS professional activities varies significantly for different levels of management but does not vary significantly for different industries. These results have implications for IS professional succession planning, specialty training and development. They also can serve as guidelines for selecting, performance appraising and recruiting the right IS managers. Keywords: activity competency model, IS professional activity; IS skills and knowledge. Introduction Today, information technology (IT) progression makes data resources and information systems (IS) become firms critical strategic resources. Faced with a constant onslaught of emergent IT, IS managers must make difficult choice and implement, deliver, and support these choices throughout their organization [2]. IS managers typically exhibit management roles requiring effective communication with other functional areas and organizations, managing information resources, influencing organizational strategy and responsibility for the IT planning to cope with the firm s competitive environment [2]. To meet a firm s information needs, an IS manager must know exactly what they should be doing in his or her position and acquire the requisite skills and knowledge to operate and manage IS human resources effectively. Nevertheless, little attention has been focused on the relationships between IS professional activities and the required skills/knowledge. The majority of these studies lacks detailed investigation of what is the perceived importance of each professional activity in relation to the needed skills/knowledge based on IS managers management levels and industrial types. To nurture and to recruit capable IS managers with the needed job skills/knowledge required to support the organization effectively, indeed, is a critical issue for today s enterprises. In effect, there are few studies that comprehensively investigated what actually takes place in the IS manager s education training environment and his or her professional development context. The objective of this research is, therefore, to investigate critical IS professional activities and the related skills/knowledge requirements based on three management levels. The findings of this study could provide implications and guidelines for professional development programs, professional skills training, domain knowledge acquisition and career planning for IS managers. 2. Literature review 2.. Activity competency model One way to characterize an IS manager s professional work is in terms of the roles an IS manager plays; another is based on the functions that a manager performs. Wu, et al. [9] proposed the activity competency model (ACM), derived from job characteristics theory (JCT) [9], to investigate IS manager s professional functions in more detail. The ACM shown in Figure provided a sound base to further break down the roles and/or functions of IS management into specific professional activities that a manager may perform in the course of structuring an organization s information resources. In this present study, the top of the ACM is IS manager s management level. IS managers in various hierarchical levels play different roles or functions vital to the success of the enterprise. At the next level, the IS managers must have mastered some critical IS professional activities to fulfill the roles or performed certain functions. Proficiency in each of the professional activities depends on a command of the more elemental

2 competencies at the skill and/or knowledge level that can be thought of as the most fundamental competencies contributing to organizational success. Figure. Activity competency model Based on the concepts of activity competency model (ACM) and job characteristics theory (JCT), a skill in this study, was so defined as an ability that can be developed, not necessarily inborn, and that is manifested in performance, not merely in potential. Note that a competency at the lower level is likely to support more than one competency at a higher level. Similarly, many competencies at the lower levels are likely to support a specific competency at a higher level [9] Research framework and hypotheses The hierarchical level of management is one of the critical factors that could influence an IS manager s professional activities through his or her work roles. Mintzberg [4] concluded that a manager s work could be described in terms of ten job roles and top-level managers focus more on external roles while supervisory-level manager focus more on their internal responsibilities. Amoroso et al. [] conducted a survey on 50 IS executives on IS trend issues to address the dual role of the IS executives. The results showed that IS executives concern both technical and strategic in nature, demonstrating the duality of their position. Thanks to different characteristics of jobs in different hierarchical levels, the relative importance across each IS critical activities would vary. The top IS executives ought to emphasize more on strategic and competitive IS critical activities whilst leaving the routine operational management to the middle and/or first-line IS managers. In addition, industry comparisons showed that IS managers are impacted by many factors such as the organization culture, design, characteristics, strategies, goals, and so forth. Grover et al. [8] found that managers from different functional areas differ in the relative importance they place on management roles. Rockart et al. [6] suggested that different industries influence the IS manager roles in different ways. IS managers in more dynamic, competitive industries will spend more time scanning because they need to be prepared to handle environmental contingencies. Stephen et al. [8] studied 5 successful CIOs in 5 divergent industries and suggested CIO operates as an executive and is an active participant in strategy planning and act as a bridge between the IT group, functional areas, and external entities. They concluded that the CIO s role is indeed different from that of the MIS manager. Sandwich [7] proposed a competency domain approach of conceptual/creative, leadership, interpersonal, administrative, and technical domains to structure the professional training requirements for managers in different hierarchical levels. Rifkin et al. [5] proposed a hierarchical framework of competency model for technical managers and pointed out that the technical managers role would influence their work activities and the associate skills and knowledge through critical accomplishments. In general, they have found that managers tend to engage in a broader range of activities that were once thought, and to use skills more associated with leadership facilitating, influencing, coaching, problem solving, negotiating, team working than the more traditional skills/knowledge of directing and controlling. Based on the foregoing literature review and the concepts of ACM, we predict that IS managers in different management levels and in various industries perceived the relative importance of critical IS activities and the needed professional job skills/knowledge differently. Therefore, the research framework of this study is then illustrated as in Figure 2 and the three main hypotheses are proposed as the followings. Management Levels Industry Types H H2 IS Manager s H3 Professional Activities Figure 2. Conceptual framework IS Manager s Skills/knowledge H: There is a significant difference among the management levels regarding the importance of the professional activities. H2: There is a significant difference among the industry types regarding the importance of the professional activities. H3: The importance of a skill/knowledge varies by each professional activity of IS managers for each one of the three management levels. 2

3 3. Research methodology 3.. Instrument development and pilot study A survey instrument was developed and used to collect the data used in this study. Data were gathered by researchers in personal interviews with IS managers using the questionnaire to structure their questions. From this, the researchers were able to gauge the clarity of the tasks presented, assess whether the instrument was capturing the phenomenon desired by the researchers, and verify that important activity and skill/knowledge aspects were not omitted. This process was continued until no further modifications to the questionnaire were necessary. Feedback from this pilot study served as the basis for refining the measurement scales. In this study, the questionnaire contained 3 major parts including basic data portion, the part of importance of IS manager s professional activities and the relationships with needed skills/knowledge. The basic data portion asked an IS manager to give his or her personal information including name of organization, job title, tenure, education level and to circle the current management position for cross-validating the management level of the respondent. The second and third portions are the kernel of the survey instrument for researchers in this study to investigate critical IS professional activities and the associated skills/knowledge requirements. Respondents were asked to evaluate and to write down the degree of perceived importance for each IS professional activity based on their current position. IS managers participated in this study were asked to assess the importance of these activities using a five point Likert-type scale. If the degree of importance for the activity ranked 3 or above in importance, they were further requested to choose which skill and knowledge is necessary to accomplish the IS professional activity effectively. Each of the skill/knowledge chosen or not was coded as or 0, respectively. The frequencies of each skill/knowledge related to each professional activity were then calculated and used to determine whether the skill/knowledge was important to accomplish the critical IS professional activity IS manager s professional activities This empirical study used multiple-item measures to structure Mintzberg's roles and other researchers functional perspectives and adapt them for use within the IS manager s professional context. The IS research discipline has a rich literature on the subject of IS professional activities drawing on the viewpoints of IS managers roles [,7] and functions [0,3,8]. For IS managers professional activities, we reviewed the literature about the issues of IS manager s daily professional activities (e.g. [5,,5,6]), interviewed industrial and academic experts, and carefully compared manuals of job description and handbooks of standard operation procedures for IS mangers that were collected from a number of enterprises in Taiwan. An initial list encompassed 33 professional IS activities were generated, and then an iterative process involving personal interviews with domain experts was conducted to refine the instrument. Finally, 20 critical IS professional activities were identified and used as the measurement scales of the survey instrument as listed in Table. Table. Critical IS activities of IS managers Code Professional activity Pa0 Set IS documentation standard Pa02 Set IS operation standard Pa03 Train and educate IS personnel Pa04 Train and educate end users Pa05 IS crisis management Pa06 Support existing portfolio of applications Pa07 Manage/plan systems development/implementation Pa08 Analyze business problems and IS solutions Pa09 Manage/plan corporate IS strategies, strategic applications, technology architecture Pa0 Manage/plan feasibility/ approval process for new systems and technology Pa Support information access and security Pa2 Integrate existing and new business applications Pa3 Software packages evaluation, selection and customization Pa4 Implement new or changed computer- supported business processes Pa5 Support end-user computing Pa6 Implement system evaluation processes Pa7 Explore new technology and knowledge Pa8 Hardware installation and maintenance Pa9 Contract facilitating and monitoring Pa20 Vendor development 3.3. IS manager s professional skills/knowledge Clark and Teague [4] suggested 6 important skills such as logical thinking and problem solving abilities, communication skills, organizational sills, research skills, technical writing skills, creativity, and team-working skills, required by professional women for their computing careers. Byrne and Moore [3] interviewed with sixteen software development managers and addressed 0 non-technical skills sought as desirable attribute by 5 of the 6 interviewees. Feeny and Willcocks [6] also identified 9 core IS capabilities to underpin the pursuit of high-value-added applications of IT and to capitalize on the external market s ability to deliver cost-effective IT service. The lack of holistic consideration of IS manager s work activities and related job skills/knowledge couldn t provide a comprehensive and systematic guideline or principle, in practice, to produce courses tailored to meet 3

4 different educational training needs for IS managers in different organization settings []. Consequently, the researchers in this study reviewed the literatures and the recommended document of ACM curricula, such as IS 2002-Model curriculum and guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in information systems to determine critical job skills/knowledge related to IS managers. By iteratively refining those items, 4 professional skills/knowledge were identified and used as the measurement scales of the survey instrument as listed in Table 2. Table 2. Critical IS skills/knowledge of IS managers Code Pc Pc 2 Pc 3 Pc 4 Pc 5 Pc 6 Pc 7 Pc 8 Pc 9 Pc 0 Pc Pc2 Pc3 Pc4 Skill/Knowledge Systems analysis and design System life cycle management Database management Distributed systems Business domain knowledge Programming language Telecommunications and network Operating systems Systems integration Project management Information technology management Analysis and judgment Communication and coordination Team working 3.3. Sampling Data for this study were collected across various management levels and industry types using a questionnaire survey administered in Taiwan. Enterprises from the Top-2000 ranked by Taiwan s Bureau of Business in manufacturing and service industries were included. Only those firms with a formal MIS department were qualified to be selected. By referring to the SIC Code of NASIC 2002 from U.S. Census Bureau and sampling through a random procedure, 50 companies from the Top-2000 firms in manufacturing and service industries were selected at random for constituting a representative sample in this study. Each company received an initial phone call explaining the purpose of this research project and inquiring about IS mangers willingness in these firms to participate in this study. There are one hundred and eleven companies agreed to participate in this study. Participation in this study was voluntary and people were guaranteed that their individual responses would be treated as confidential. In order to increase the response rate, after the questionnaire had been mailed for one week, a follow-up phone call was used to ask if the respondent has received the questionnaire and to solicit for responding. 4. Data analysis and results 4.. Profiles of participants We sent out 30 questionnaires to the IS managers at these companies and received 2 questionnaires. Six invalid responses were discarded. The left 5 valid responses from 73 companies were then coded for statistical analysis. The response rate is 37. %. Table 3 summarizes the profiles of the valid subjects in this study. Table 3. Profiles of the respondents Demographics Classification Freq. Percent Cumulative Supervisory Organization Middle level position Top level Industry type Manufacturing Service Senior high Education College/Univ level Master degree Professional experience (Years) Ph D degree < ~ ~ ~ > Factor analysis Based on the data of perceived importance for each IS manager s professional activity, an exploratory factor analysis was applied to investigate the 20 critical activities in more detail to reduce the variables into a smaller number of factors. Bartlett s sphericity test of critical IS professional activities showed that the p-values were less than This test result suggested that factor analysis was worth pursuing. The 5 responses were examined using principle-component factor analysis as the extraction technique and varimax as the orthogonal rotation method. To derive a stable factor structure, three commonly employed decision rules were applied to eliminate scales: () eigenvalue less than ; (2) loadings of less than 0.5 on all scale factors; and (3) loadings greater than 0.4 on two or more scale factors [7]. Four of critical activities had loadings less than 0.5 on any factor were eliminated. Three iterations yielded a stable factor structure of four factors named enterprise system planning & implementation (Factor ), education & training (Factor 2), system evaluation & supporting (Factor 3), and standard setting (Factor 4). As shown in Table 4, there are 7, 3, 3 and 2 critical activities included in the four activity factors, respectively. The critical IS activity data set explained of the variance. Cronbach s alpha was used to validate the reliability. The alpha values were greater than 0.6 for all the factors, the reliability of the data can be assured. 4

5 Table 4. Varimax rotated factor matrix of 20-item critical IS activity instrument Professional activity Factor Enterprise system planning & implementation Factor2 Education & training Factor3 System evaluation & supporting Factor4 Standard setting Pa0 Manage/plan feasibility/ approval process for new systems and technology Pa8 Analyze business problems and IS solutions Pa9 Manage/plan corporate IS strategies, strategic applications, technology architecture Pa2 Integrate existing and new business applications Pa Support information access and security Pa20 Vendor development Pa7 Manage/plan systems development/implementation Pa3 Train and educate IS personnel Pa5 IS crisis management Pa4 Train and educate end users Pa5 Supporting end-user computing Pa9 Contract facilitating and monitoring Pa6 Implementing system evaluation processes Pa Set IS documentation standard Pa2 Set IS operation standard Eigenvalues % of Variance coefficient Testing of the hypotheses Effects of industry types and management levels on IS manger s professional activities. Prior to the twoway MANOVA analysis, Box s M tests (F =.33, Sig. = 0.; F =.34, Sig. = 0.57) showed that the observed covariance matrices for the dependent variables were equal across groups. The results of tests suggested that further MANOVA tests were worth pursuing. The twoway MANOVA analysis indicated that there was no interaction between the management levels and industry types for the professional activity categories (Wilks' Lambda = 0.93; F =.0; Sig. = 0.43). The results also indicated that the perception of the importance of IS professional activities was significantly different among the management levels (F = 3.69; Sig. = 0.00), but not significantly different for various industry types (F =.42, Sig. = 0.23). The results of two-way MANOVA are summarized as the following Table 5. Table 5. Two-way MANOVA of critical IS activity factors among management levels and industry types Effect Wilks' Lambda F statistics Sig. Industry types Management levels ** Industry types x Mgmt. levels **p<0.0 For validating whether the four professional activityfactors were just as important to the three levels of management, one-way MANOVA testing was again used and the results are shown in Table 6. As it shows, different levels of management perceive the importance of the enterprise system planning & implementation (Factor ), education & training (Factor 2), and standard setting (Factor 4) related professional activity factors differently. Explicitly, the hypothesis, H, is supported. Table 6. One-way MANOVA of critical IS activity factors among management levels Activity factor F Sig. Factor : Enterprise system planning and implementation ** Factor 2: Education and training * Factor 3: System evaluation and maintenance Factor 4: Standard setting * *p<0.05; ** p<0.0 The Scheffe s tests were further applied for discriminating the different importance of each of critical IS professional activities as perceived by three levels of management. As shown in Table 7, the results indicated that top IS management perceived the enterprise system planning & implementation (Factor ) and standard setting (Factor 4) related IS professional activities as more important than did supervisory management. In addition, supervisory IS managers considered the perceptual importance of the educating & training (Factor 2) activities was greater than did middle management, and there was no significant difference of the perceived importance on system evaluation and maintenance (Factor 3) related IS professional activities among three levels of managements. These interesting findings are worth of additional follow-up survey in our future study. 5

6 Table 7. Scheffe s multiple comparisons of critical IS activity factors among management levels Activity factor Between mgmt. levels MD Sig. Factor : Enterprise system Supervisory vs. Middle planning and Middle vs. Top Implementation Top vs. Supervisory * Supervisory vs. Middle * Factor 2: Education and training Middle vs. Top Top vs. Supervisory Supervisory vs. Middle Factor 3: System evaluation and maintenance Middle vs. Top Top vs. Supervisory Supervisory vs. Middle Factor 4: Standard setting Middle vs. Top Top vs. Supervisory * *p<0.05 Since the MANOVA test result, as shown in Table 5 (F =.42, Sig. = 0.232), indicated that the perception of the importance of IS professional activities was not significantly different among the industry types. Namely, H2 is not supported. This suggested that further test of H2 was not worth pursing and thus the further analysis will not be shown in the rest of this paper Effects of management levels on IS manger s professional activities. To further investigate the perceived importance of the professional activities for IS managers among management levels; a t-test was utilized to analyze the data set. The successive statistics analysis including t test on IS professional activities and frequency analysis on the relationships among IS professional activities in associate with job skills/knowledge were so to be focused on the difference among each level of management. The results of t-test on IS critical IS professional activities that are significant have been summarized in Table 8, indicated that top, middle and supervisory managements ranked, 6, and 3 critical IS activities, respectively. The findings clearly identify what critical IS professional activities for each level of management to pay more attention, that is, there is a significant difference among the management levels regarding the importance of the professional activities. For IS managers in top level of management, they are more focused on the related activities such as set IS documentation standard (Pa), set IS operation standard (Pa2), manage/plan feasibility/ approval process for new systems and technology (Pa0), and vendor development (Pa20) than are IS managers in middle and supervisory level. IS managers in middle level might improve their abilities to carry out the activities such as manage/plan systems development/ implementation (Pa7), analyze business problems and IS solutions (Pa8), manage/plan corporate IS strategies, strategic applications, technology architecture (Pa9), and support information access and security (Pa) than in supervisory level. The supervisory-level IS managers are more focused on the activities of train and educate IS personnel (Pa3), IS crisis management (Pa5), and integrate existing and new business applications (Pa2). Table 8. T-test of perceived importance of critical IS activities among management levels Factor Professional activity Management level (Test Value = 3.5) Top Middle Supervisory 4 Set IS documentation Pa standard ** 4 Pa2 Set IS operation standard ** 2 Train and educate IS Pa3 personnel ** * ** 2 Pa5 IS crisis management * ** ** Manage/plan systems Pa7 development/implementation ** ** Analyze business problems Pa8 and IS solutions ** ** Manage/plan corporate IS strategies, strategic Pa9 applications, technology ** * architecture Support information access Pa and security ** ** Manage/plan feasibility/ Pa0 approval process for new systems and technology ** Integrate existing and new Pa2 business applications ** * Pa20 Vendor development * Total 6 3 **p<0.0; *p< Analysis of relationship between professional activities and skills/knowledge. We added up the frequencies of professional skills/knowledge required to perform each of critical IS professional activities that have been selected by IS managers in each level of management discussed in Table 8. The ratios of frequencies divided by the numbers of IS managers in each of the three management levels can be used to determine which job skill/knowledge is important for an IS manager to carry out each of the critical IS professional activities. If the ratio of the job skills/knowledge in respect to each of IS professional activities is greater than 50%, it is considered as an important job skills/knowledge. That is, half or above of each level of managers have selected and thought the job skill/knowledge is necessary for them to carry out the IS critical activities, definitely, it was recognized as an important job skill/knowledge for IS managers. The results of frequency analysis are listed as the following Table 9. The results imply that IS managers in different management levels might be able to possess different mixes of job skills/knowledge to performing different critical IS professional activities. That is, the hypothesis, H3 is supported. In general, there are 2 job skills/knowledge with at least one of the frequency ratios that are greater than 50% among the 4 important professional job skills/knowledge. 6

7 Table 9. Frequency analysis of the relationships between critical IS activities and job skills/knowledge As the results shown in Table 9, the most widely required job skill/knowledge for IS managers in various hierarchical levels is systems integration (Pc9), then followed by business domain knowledge (Pc5), analysis and judgment (Pc2), systems analysis and design (Pc), database management (PC3), project management (Pc0), operating systems (Pc8), telecommunications and network (Pc7), system life cycle management (Pc2), programming language (Pc6) communication and coordination (Pc3) and Information technology management (Pc). Interestingly, the requisite skills/knowledge for IS managers are quite different in different levels of management. Say, IS mangers in executive management level require various competency mixes among 2 job skills/knowledge to handle the critical IS professional activities. The middle-level IS mangers need 8 skills/knowledge to execute the 6 important IS professional activities. For supervisory-level of IS managers, they may acquire 6 job skills/knowledge to accomplish the 3 important IS professional activities. The activity competency profiles of IS critical activities and the required skills/knowledge in respect to each level of IS managers can then be identified and further aggregated in accordance with the results of data analysis in this study. 5. Conclusions Our findings provided empirical insights into the ACM to explain the perceived importance of IS managers critical activities and the related skills/knowledge for each level of IS management. The importance of the IS professional activities were viewed in significantly different ways by different levels of management and the level of importance for these activities was not significantly different in different industry types. In effect, for enterprise system planning & implementation (Factor ), education & training (Factor 2) and standard setting (Factor 4) activities, the higher the level of management, the greater the weight placed on the activities. Middle management level places heavier emphasis upon enterprise system planning & implementation (Factor ) and education & training (Factor 2) activities than supervisory management. One explanation of this result may be that, in general, for any organization the IS manager typically exhibits 7

8 professional roles or functions in managing information resources, influence on organizational strategy, or responsibility for the planning of IT to cope with a firm s competitive environment. More specifically, performing different IS professional activities needs a different mix of job skills/knowledge. Based on the results in Table 9, the educational needs of IS managers become obvious, whilst the gaps in the process of filling vacancies become more apparent. For example, training the supervisory IS management might need to focus more on the activities of train and educate IS personnel (Pa3), IS crisis management (Pa5), and integrate existing and new business applications (Pa2) as well as the skills/knowledge in need such as database management (Pc3), business domain knowledge (Pc5), telecommunications and network (Pc7), and so forth. For IS managers in the middle level, other than the scope of the supervisory level, more emphasis needs to be placed on manage/plan systems development/implementation (Pa7), analyze business problems and IS solutions (Pa8), manage/plan corporate IS strategies, strategic applications, technology architecture (Pa9), and support information access and security (Pa) and the requisite skills/knowledge such as systems analysis and design (Pc), system life cycle management (Pc2), programming language (Pc6), and operating systems (Pc8). For the top level managers, over and above the scopes of the middle and supervisory levels, more emphasis needs to be placed on set IS documentation standard (Pa), set IS operation standard (Pa2), manage/plan feasibility/ approval process for new systems and technology (Pa0), and vendor development (Pa20) and the critical skills/knowledge such as telecommunications and network (Pc7), project management (Pc0), information technology management (Pc), and communication and coordination (Pc3). Training programs that are developed to minimize the gaps have helped the organization to form a pool of qualified candidates for succession into all positions. The ACM approach is of particular value to those concerned with IS professional training and development in large organizations. It provides a template to help educators, IS curriculum developers of training programs identify the necessary activities and job skills/knowledge for each level of IS management. Educators can further develop clear-cut skills portfolios that accurately account for the complete mix of job skills/knowledge required for all IS management and professional positions in their own specific context. In addition, base on the perspectives of ACM and the concepts of JCT, it seems to be easier to discuss professional development with lower level IS managers and or IS professionals. Both parties will be better able to identify the types of training and development needed to improve each individual s professional performance. The applications on ACM can also be of value for individual career planning. Acknowledgement This research was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan, under operating grant NSC H References [] D.L. Amoroso, R.L. Thompson, and P.H. Cheney, Examining the Duality Role of I.S. Executives: A Study of IS Issues, Information and Management, 989, 7(), pp. -2. [2] J. Benamati, and A.L. Lederer, Coping with Rapid Changes in IT, Communications of the ACM, 200, 44(8), pp [3] D.J. Byrne, and J.L. Moore, A Comparison between the Recommendations of Computing Curriculum 99 and the Views of Software Development Managers in Ireland, Computers and Education, 997, 28(3), pp [4] V.A. Clarke, and G.J. Teague, Characterizations of Computing Careers: Students and Professonals Disagree, Computers and Education, 996, 26(4), pp [5] J.D. Couger, E.B. Oppermann, and D.L. Amoroso, Changes in Motivation of I.S. Managers - Comparison over a Decade, Information Resources Management Journal, 994, 7(2), pp.5-3. [6] D.F. Feeny, and L.P. Willcocks, Core IS Capabilities for Exploiting Information Technology, Sloan Management Review, 998, 39(3), pp.9-2. [7] M.K. Fuller, and E.B. Swanson, Information Centers as Organizational Innovation: Exploring the Correlates of Implementation Success, Journal of Management Information Systems, 992, 9(), pp [8] V. Grover, S.-R. Jeong, W.J. Kettinger, and C. Lee, The Chief Information Officer: A Study of Management Roles, Journal of Management Information Systems, 993, 0(2), pp [9] J.R. Hackman, and G.R. Oldham, Work Redesign, Addison- Weslley, 980, Reading, MA. [0] D.M.S. Lee, E.M. Trauth, and D. Farwell, Critical Skills/knowledge Requirements of IS Professionals: A Joint Academic/ industry investigation, MIS Quarterly, 995, 9(3), [] S. Lee, S. Koh, D. Yen, and H.-L.Tang, Perception Gaps between IS Academics and IS Practitioners: an Exploratory Study, Information and Management, 40(), 2002, pp.5-6. [2] C.O. Longenecker, and L.S. Fink, Improving Management Performance in Rapidly Changing Organizations, Journal of 8

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