Subject: [Fwd: UW: iSchool Talks: Kay Nelson 4/13/01]
From: Craig Chambers (chambers@cs.washington.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 09 2001 - 17:02:24 PDT
Hey, they use multi-methods!
-- Craig
sjdakins@cs.washington.edu wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maija Haefer [mailto:maijah@u.washington.edu]
>
> UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
> Seattle, Washington 98195
>
> The Information School
> Box 352930; Tel.:(206) 543-1794
> www.ischool.washington.edu
>
> COLLOQUIUM
>
> SPEAKER: Dr. Kay Nelson
>
> TITLE: A Multi-Method Approach to IT Personnel Issues
>
> DATE: Friday, April 13, 2001
>
> TIME: 2:00-3:30 pm
>
> PLACE: Odegaard Undergraduate Library (OUGL) 220, University of
> Washington
> Campus
> Map available from:
> http://www.washington.edu/home/maps/northcentral.html
>
> HOST: Efthimis Efthimiadis, iSchool Faculty
>
> BIOGRAPHY:
> Dr. Kay Nelson is an assistant professor of Information Systems at The
> University of Utah. Dr. Nelson has industry and academic experience
> both in
> the U.S. and overseas. She has held engineering and technology
> management
> positions at Procter and Gamble, Apple Computer, and the NATO Frigate
> Replacement Program. Dr. Nelson has also been a researcher and advisor
> to
> The Boeing Company since 1992. She has received over $900,000 in
> research
> grants from Boeing since 1994.
> Dr. Nelson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in
> Management Science and Information Systems with minors in Technology
> Management and Organizational Behavior. She works extensively in the
> areas
> of organizational and information technology flexibility, strategy,
> business
> value, e-business, and measurement. Dr. Nelson has published numerous
> articles about IT personnel issues, software engineering, and
> IT/Business
> partnership in publications such as MIS Quarterly, European Journal of
> Information Systems, and Decision Support Systems. Dr. Nelson is an
> active
> reviewer for MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research, and was
> recently an Associate Editor for the International Conference on
> Information
> Systems (ICIS) program committee. Her research awards include the ICIS
> best
> paper award and the Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems
> (WITS)
> best paper award, as well as two nominations for best paper from the
> Hawaii
> International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS). The National
> Science
> Foundation recently awarded Dr. Nelson a four-year Career Grant to
> investigate IT Personnel Transition and Organization Transition
> Strategy.
> She is a George S. Eccles Emerging Scholar at The University of Utah and
> held the Dean Whierry Fellowship at the University of Kansas.
> In addition to her research accomplishments, Dr. Nelson has been
> recognized
> for her teaching accomplishments by being designated a PhD Student
> Honors
> Mentor at the University of Kansas and being nominated for the graduate
> teaching award at The University of Utah. She has also worked closely
> with
> undergraduate students, sponsoring the only successful KU Undergraduate
> Summer Research Grant, in the past five years, within the School of
> Business. Dr. Nelson has served on numerous departmental, school, and
> university committees including the University of Utah Electronic
> Commerce
> and Electronic Research Administration committees. She is a mentor for
> the
> 2001 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, a member of the Utah Information
> Technology Association, and a research member of the international Car
> Internet Research Program (CIRP).
>
> ABSTRACT:
> A Multi-Method Approach to IT Personnel Issues workshop will present the
> results of a study of software operations support expertise and the
> initial
> results of a study of IT personnel transition. Both studies use the
> revealed causal mapping (RCM) method to build mid-range theory in areas
> of
> IT that have been previously unexplored.
>
> The first study looks at software operations support (maintenance),
> which is
> a large portion of the IT work performed in organizations. While we as
> researchers have access to generalized theories and frameworks of
> expertise,
> very little is known about expertise in this critical area. To
> understand
> software operations support expertise, a mid-range theory is evoked from
> interviews with experts and construction of RCMs from those interviews.
> The
> results of this study indicate that software operations support
> expertise is
> comprised of five major constructs; Personal Competencies, Environmental
> Factors, Support Personnel Motivation, IS Policies, and Support
> Personnel
> Outcomes. Additionally, this study revealed that these constructs
> interact
> differently in contexts where software support is the main activity
> versus
> contexts where the focus is development. The main part of this study
> was
> published in MIS Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3, September, 2000. The
> workshop presentation will go more deeply into the Personal Competencies
> construct, showing how this is being further developed as part of the IT
> transition study.
>
> An NSF Career Grant funds the IT personnel transition study. This is a
> four-year study that investigates transitions being made by in-house IT
> organizations and their personnel. These organizations are experiencing
> a
> great deal of change. Three of the main areas where this change is
> occurring are in technology, work practices and methods, and the role of
> the
> IT professional. IT organizations are transitioning from legacy system
> technology to distributed and advanced web technologies. Work practices
> that were ad hoc at best are being redefined with software engineering
> discipline. IT professionals who once produced products and services
> that
> were "thrown over the fence" to in-house customers are now expected to
> be
> full e-business partners and change agents. All of these organizational
> level changes require individual IT professionals to make significant
> personal transitions to meet organizational needs. At the same time that
> in-house IT organizations are being redefined, a significant shortage of
> qualified IT personnel exists (Brancheau et.al, 1996). This shortage
> makes
> it difficult to hire new employees, and puts an even greater requirement
> on
> existing IT professionals to make the transition. This research
> proposes to
> identify and validate the constructs associated with individual IT
> personnel
> transition as well as IT organizational transition strategies.
>
> The constructs of IT personnel transition are evoked using revealed
> causal
> mapping. This is phase one of the study and is almost complete.
> Results
> to-date will be presented at the workshop. In the next phase of the
> study,
> three case studies will be performed to identify the factors of
> organizational transition strategy, and to also clarify the dependent
> variables of this phenomenon. The factors identified in the first phase
> of
> the project will then be tested using a survey based field study. This
> study will be analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, a
> longitudinal case study will be done on one of the organizations in the
> original causal mapping sample. These respondents will be
> re-interviewed
> and re-surveyed to both detect changes through management intervention
> and
> to attempt to confirm the model derived earlier in the study. The
> combination of causal mapping, case studies and field-based quantitative
> analysis provides this project with both a richness of understanding and
> the
> rigor of empirical testing. The constructs and operationalizations of
> individual IT personnel transition and organizational transition
> strategies
> that result from this study will allow researchers a deeper
> understanding of
> this phenomenon and provide measures for future research. This research
> will also provide models and understanding of transition needs at the
> individual level and strategy at the organizational level that managers
> can
> use in their organizations.
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