Jordan Software Industry: Investigating the Role of Human Capital

Abstract

Software industry is realized as one key opportunity for socio-economic development, especially for developing countries. Human Capital heavily plays a critical role in such knowledge-based sectors as software. This paper describes and analyzes the role of human capital in the development of Jordan software industry between 1980's and 2005. In doing so, different roles in software industry are identified, described and analyzed. The study suggests that the existence of some levels of professional, technical and ICT graduates, will not guarantee the development of the sector. Quality, proper utilization, collaboration and policy coherency of Human Capital is needed for software sector development. Moreover, we argue that challenges such as Diaspora can have a positive impact through technology transfer and entrepreneurship as the Indian case suggests.Keywords: Human capital, Economic development, Software industry IntroductionSoftware industry is seen as an opportunity for economic growth especially for developing countries (Nicholson and Sahay, 2008). The successful case of India and Ireland provide sufficient evidence of software industry role as a major economic growth engine (Baraya et.al 2008). The huge advancement in telecommunication technologies and internationalization of business process where key factors that leads to the globalization of software industry. Countries with low-cost qualified human capital, fine telecommunication infrastructure, and supporting national polices became the ones who benefited most of this globalization and thus had the impressive payback on exports and economic development (Jones 1994, Heeks 1999, Arora et.al 2001. Software industry is not a "solo industry", but rather a vehicle for industrial development. In fact, software industry is more than just "another industry-it is a central intermediate good in the new digital economy" and its function became not less important than the role played by any other production factors (Athreye 2003). As economies are turning to more knowledge-based industries, many products require embedded software and more competitive e-businesses will require more effective software (Hoch et al. 1999).However, software industry is based intensively on Human Capital (HR) "more than any other high-tech Industry" (Arora and Bagde 2010). In fact, the existence of skilled and professional human capital in software industry is widely acknowledged as the most important element in the success of the software industry (Lakha 1994). Yet, the presence of human capital does not guarantee the quality and many other factors are needed to trigger software industry development.For a country with limited resources (expect for human capital), Jordan had allocated notable effort to join the software industry exporters club. Although Jordan has realized a notable advancement in key factors supporting software industry development such as education, intellectual property rights (IPR) and telecommunication infrastructure, software industry outputs as are still re...

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