Educational Needs as Perceived by IS and End-User Personnel: A Survey of Knowledge and Skill Requirements.

Author List: Nelson, R. Ryna;
MIS Quarterly, 1991, Volume 15, Issue 4, Page 503-525.
One of the fundamental issues inherent to both practice and academia emanates from the need to know what knowledge and skills personnel must possess to successfully perform their jobs. This article addresses this issue by performing an educational needs assessment, one that considers the deficiencies of both IS and end-user personnel. To this end, an instrument has been developed, tested, and completed by 275 employees within eight different organizations. The findings of this study suggest that among six different knowledge and skill areas, both IS and end-user personnel are most deficient in the area of "general IS knowledge" (e.g., IS policies and plans, fit between IS and organization, etc.). In addition, IS personnel appear to be in need of more "organizational knowledge" (e.g., organizational goals and objectives, critical success factors, etc.). End users, on the other hand, seem to require more IS-related skills (e.g., data access, use of software packages, etc.). The implications of these findings for practitioners and academicians focus on finding ways to improve the education and training programs currently in place.
Keywords: Organizational learning; education; training; knowledge; skills; integration; end-user computing
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#72 0.251 skills professionals skill job analysts managers study results need survey differences jobs different significantly relative required motivation programmers technical factors
#134 0.139 users end use professionals user organizations applications needs packages findings perform specialists technical computing direct future selection ability help software
#144 0.136 knowledge transfer management technology creation organizational process tacit research study organization processes work organizations implications practice explicit models consultants transfers
#159 0.117 systems information objectives organization organizational development variety needs need efforts technical organizations developing suggest given effective designing lack help recent
#248 0.085 computing end-user center support euc centers management provided users user services organizations end satisfaction applications article ibm step field policies
#227 0.076 commitment need practitioners studies potential role consider difficult models result importance influence researchers established conduct investigated establishing appear clearly determining
#27 0.070 secondary use primary data outcomes objective ways analysis range addresses development purpose budget past outcome wide direct generating occurs desired