Complete thesis - Murdoch University

• Lee (1999a) focusses on the changing role of IT within organisations and the informationseeking behaviour of recent graduates (ie those with less than five years IS workexperience). Preliminary results from this study show that IS workers need not havea technology-relevant degree (over 80% of 300 graduates employed by a large IS consultingfirm over a period of two years majored in non-computing related areas). Inaddition, IS workers draw heavily from a ‘bipolar’ knowledge structure – most currenttechnical knowledge and localised team-centric project work, but are unable to exploittacit organisational knowledge outside their specific project.In acknowledging a gap between the academic preparation offered by universities and whatindustry demands, Lee concluded that academic programmes should stress fundamental concepts,but incorporate more team projects that emphasise information searching and problemformulation (as opposed to problem solving alone) so that students can deal more effectivelywith the challenges of industry. He noted that interpersonal communication accounts for themost important means of knowledge transfer in technological work, with team members asthe most utilised interpersonal information source. At the same time, interaction with usersand clients remains weak as does use of organisational knowledge.This is supported by Doke and Williams (1999). They looked at the importance of specificknowledge and skills for IS professionals in different IS positions. Not surprisingly, they foundthat, in general, those holding entry-level positions did not value ‘organisational knowledge’and ‘general IS knowledge’ to the same extent as they did technical knowledge. The latterbecomes less important (but not unimportant) later in a career. In all of the IS positions, thehighest ranked knowledge and skills were predominantly from the ‘organisational skills’ area(eg interpersonal behaviour and communications, oral, written and multimedia communications).System development knowledge and skills (including analysing information systemsand design and implementation of systems) also were highly ranked by all IS positions, suggestinga need to place more emphasis on these areas in formal education.Table 2.2: Lee: Comparison of IS formal education and industry requirementsIS education characteristics Industry characteristicsstructured learning environment independent and self-motivatedlearningworkers tend to be more task thanrelationship orientedworkers must interact closely andbuild relationships with colleaguesLee expands his discussion of this gap in a later study (Lee, 2004) (summarised in Table2.2). This latest work, of transition from study to workplace, also found that one of the‘reality shock’ involved in the socialisation of new graduates to work was the onus of teaching23