Gartner, a leading provider of research and analysis about the global information technology industry, has warned that outsourcing, offshoring and the increasing control of IT being handed to business units will lead to the death of the IT department as we know it today. Two-thirds of the CIOs interviewed by silicon.com concur with this warning: they claim that the corporate IT department will not exist in its current form in 2010 (McCue, 2005). They further indicate that IT will increasingly be handed to large-scale providers as it becomes commercially and strategically attractive and that as infrastructures become more stable and scalable, the raison d’etre of the IT department will shift to becoming centers of innovation and integration supporting the rapid assembly of new products and services. A very recent special report on The Future of Outsourcing by BusinessWeek argues that while changes brought about by outsourcing can be harsh and deep, a more enlightened, strategic view of global sourcing is starting to emerge as managers get a better fix on its potential (Engardio, 2006). This emergent view is referred to as “transformational outsourcing” and is serving as a catalyst for corporate growth, making better use of U.S. staff by freeing up expensive talent so they can spend more time innovating, job creation in the U.S., and not just cheap wages abroad. In addition, this view also sees tremendous gains in efficiency, productivity, quality, and revenues that can be achieved by fully leveraging offshore talent (Engardio, 2006). The stakes are indeed very high for the IT department. As business conditions change, IT departments must adapt because the alternative is irrelevance – and extinction: “IT departments that are not already embracing change management methodologies while keeping one eye on the future direction of the business could find themselves losing their foothold in the company” (Bradbury, 2005). The stakes are equally high for our IS/IT programs.

Most schools are experiencing a dramatic drop in IS majors. There is a growing perception that IS/IT jobs are not available. For example, a Wall Street Journal article suggested that if one is in IT, one needs to find another job. In addition, many college deans have shifted resources from the once vibrant IS departments. Also, IS PhD graduates are having a difficult time finding academic jobs (Hirschheim, 2005). As for the future of entry-level jobs in IT, a CIO Magazine editorial complained about the reluctance of many CIOs to talk about it (1-15-2005). Is this trend merely cyclical or is it a more deep-rooted problem? Are our programs in lock step with the profound changes occurring in business and in the IT industry?

This paper seeks to stir up passionate dialogue by arguing that most of our IS/IT programs in their current form are facing slow death. It argues that change and realignment are necessary and calls for a reexamination of our prevaliling assumptions and the development of a strong value proposition that is both compelling and clear to all our stakeholders. Business schools and departments of (computer) information systems need to be particularly attentive to the demands of outsourcing and offshoring as they seek IS or IT accreditation of curricula, for the current curriculum guidelines, which focus extensively on hardware and programming, may now be out of date and out of touch with the new globalization.

Keywords: business value proposition, history of science, countries, values, Rex Dumdum, India

DUMDUM, Rex; TASTLE, William J. What is our value proposition? The future of IS/IT programs and faculty: A reality check and need for realignment dialogue starter. 2006 International Association for Computer Information Systems Conference, Issues in Information Systems, September 2006. Available from < http://iacis.org/conference/proceedings/IACIS_2006_Proceedings.pdf >. access on 8 October 2019.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=pt-BR&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22information+systems+curriculum%22+guidelines+%22history+of+science%22&btnG=

-- GregorioIvanoff - 08 Oct 2019
to top