Challenges of Managing the Global IS/IT Workforce

Abstract

The trend toward globalization of business has increased the need for global information systems that enable and support global operations. In order to develop and support global information systems, organizations must employ a global IS/IT workforce. This chapter details the unique nature of this global IS/IT workforce, identifies and discusses specific challenges to the management of these employees, and describes strategies for addressing these challenges. Relevant prior research on this topic in the management and MIS disciplines, labor statistics, as well as prior and ongoing research by the authors, are used to support this discussion.

Assessing the IT training and development climate

“…Managers must proactively manage the firm's IT skill resource through the creation of formal skill inventories aimed at allowing the firm to be more agile in a highly volatile and competitive market [39,28,21,29]. Although the staffing decision has addressed primarily the long-term interests of the firm [1,2,8,4,39,21], some recent work has focused on the short-term needs of individual projects [42,18] and the selection and coordination of individual employees [22,17].…”