An Empirical Investigation of Contingent Workforce in Information Systems

INTRODUCTION Since the recession in the 1980s, U.S. corporations have been strategically acquiring, merging, restructuring, and downsizing. Such strategic adjustments are aimed at configuring leanandmean operations in response to the increasingly dynamic, competitive and uncertain business climate (ScottMorton, 1991). A direct consequence of these radical changes to business operations is the revolutionary change in the traditional employer employee working relationship. Pfeffer and Baron (1988) suggest that there is a trend toward taking the workers back out , in which organizations externalize a buffer of temporary workers against the core or permanent workforce. This externalization involves the use of contingent workforce where workers are physically transported out of the organization\u27s boundaries to perform their work; where the duration of employment becomes shorter and more flexible; and where workers are detached administratively with organizations reducing their internal control of workers. Recent literature suggests that externalization of the workforce has been particularly pronounced in information systems (IS). Many internal IS organizations have been undergoing continual downsizing of their traditional permanent workforce since the late 1980\u27s by outsourcing and contracting (Niederman and Trower, 1993; Korzeniowski, 1990). Molloy (1991) highlighted an increasing number of temporary executive IS jobs while Ryan (1991) observed that jobless IS workers are turning to contract work to tide over their midcareer crisis. Clearly, these trends have significant implications for IS human resource management. For example, IS careers, incentive structures, and mutual employerworker obligations will be affected radically by an increasing presence and use of contingent workforce in organizations. However, despite the changing nature of IS employment options and the importance of IS human resource management (Niederman, Brancheau and Wetherbe, 1991), there has been little systematic analysis of the nature, extent and antecedents of externalizing IS human resources in organizations. Our study is designed with two objectives: to provide an empirical analysis of actual trends in IS employment strategies and to derive an explanatory model predicting the choice of a particular IS employment strategy. Thus, the first set of issues examined concerns the forms and trends of alternative employment strategies in IS. We examine the following questions: what are the hiring options opened to both employers and workers in IS ? what is the trend in alternative employment strategies in IS since the 1980s ? We draw upon transaction cost economics to derive an explanatory model predicting the antecedents of IS employment strategies. The choice to use internal or external IS employment strategies can be framed as a classic make or buy decision of transaction cost economics, with respect to human capital inputs. Economists have often focused on costs inherent in various make or buy decisions. Coase (1937) originally theorized about the tradeoffs between transaction costs of external procurement and management costs of internal production. Demsetz (1988) argued that there are three different kinds of costs: production costs, exchange or transaction costs, and management costs inherent in any boundary outcome and that it is a combination of all three that is important in determining the make or buy decision. Williamson (1981) shifted attention away from distinguishing transaction and management costs, as these costs are difficult to measure operationally. Instead, in the context of labor factor inputs, he focused on the presence of particular job characteristics such as firm specificity of skills, high interdependency, difficulty in monitorability, and task complexity, emphasizing the burden of management and transaction costs when jobs are externalized. In effect, these job characteristics offer proxy measures of transaction costs. Thus, the second set of issues examined in this study concerns the kinds of considerations that play a role in boundary determination for IS labor. We examine the following questions: how do transaction costs determine IS labor boundaries ? what kinds of IS skill and job characteristics are associated with alternative employment strategies for IS labor

Managing the Unmanageable: How IS Research Can Contribute to the Scholarship of Cyber Projects

Cyber projects are large-scale efforts to implement computer, information, and communication technologies in scientific communities. These projects seek to build scientific cyberinfrastructure that will promote new scientific collaborations and transform science in novel and unimagined ways. Their scope and complexity, the number and diversity of stakeholders, and their transformational goals make cyber projects extremely challenging to understand and manage. Consequently, scholars from multiple disciplines, including computer science, information science, sociology, and information systems, have begun to study cyber projects and their impacts. As IS scholars, our goal is to contribute to this growing body of inter-disciplinary knowledge by considering three areas of IS research that are particularly germane to this class of project, given their characteristics: development approaches, conflict, and success factors. After describing cyber projects, we explore how IS research findings in these three areas are relevant for cyber projects, and suggest promising avenues of future research. We conclude by discussing the importance and unique challenges of cyber projects and propose that, given our expertise and knowledge of project management, IS researchers are particularly well suited to contribute to the inter-disciplinary study of these projects

Project Managers\u27 Skills and Project Success in IT Outsourcing

What skills do project managers (PMs) need, and how do these skills impact project success in IT outsourcing? In this study, we seek to identify what factors impact IT project outcomes, such as costs and client satisfaction, given the project characteristics and PM’s hard and soft skills. We examine data collected from a field study conducted at a major IT service provider in India. Our results suggest that while hard skills such as technical or domain expertise may be essential in a PM, soft skills, such as tacit knowledge of organizational culture and clients, are more important for project success. The results are robust to different specifications

Software Volatility: A Stystem-Level Measure

With change our only constant, information systems researchers appreciate the need to measure and understand change processes occurring in software systems (i.e., software volatility). In this study we define a system-level multi-dimensional measure of software volatility. This measure can be used both quantitatively and qualitatively to analyze system behavior. We describe the lifecycle volatility of three application systems. We also discuss use of software volatility as a qualitative measure to interpret system behavior for software portfolio management

Application Portfolio Diversity and Software Maintenance Productivity:An Empirical Analysis

The research addresses the issue of productivity in application software maintenance. Specifically, it examines the effect of diversity in tools, techniques, hardware and software associated with the portfolio being maintained. In manufacturing environments, there is some evidence to suggest that production of products where there is little sharing of inputs and production processes reduces focus and results in lower manufacturing performance (Skinner, 1974). In economics, it is argued that there are cost complementarities or economies of scope in sharing common inputs and processes among various products with commonalities in production, and diseconomies of scope when inputs and processes differ (Panzar and Willig, 1977, 1981). In the software maintenance context, the issue of diversity and its effect on productivity is particularly salient. Software maintenance is work done to enhance software functionality, correct errors and improve the performance of software (Schneidewind, 1987). It is a costly activity for organizations, requiring from 50 to 80% of the Information Systems (IS) budget and representing more than threefourths of software costs on a life cycle basis (Arthur, 1988). Application portfolio diversity, i.e.,differences in technical platforms, software languages, and development tools and techniques in the set of the organization\u27s software systems, arises as a consequence of the organization\u27s information technology infrastructure decisions. To meet a particular customer need, an IS group acquires or develops software using a certain tool, methodology, and hardware platform. However, it may be that the software does not fit well into the organization\u27s existing technical platform. Furthermore, the software may have been developed using a different methodology or tools than other software systems in the organization\u27s portfolio. This diversity may have the result of increased difficulty in software maintenance because software enhancement can require modification of multiple software systems that have been created using a variety of languages, tools and techniques. The results of our analysis suggest that software portfolio diversity reduces productivity in software maintenance. Potential inefficiencies from diversity in software maintenance can arise from several causes. Switching costs are incurred due to multiple, varied process flows and frequent change over in processes required when modifying software created using different methodologies and tools. Diversity may also increase the difficulty of software quality control, testing and verification; for example, inefficiencies may occur due to the complexities of conducting system and integration testing across multiple technical platforms. Finally, there may be costs due to the difficulties in selecting project team members with the multiple and varied skills required to modify diverse sets of software

Characteristics of Hospitalized Children With a Diagnosis of Malnutrition

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141004/1/jpen0623-sup-0001.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141004/2/jpen0623.pd

Are We Wise About Sub-Fields in IS? Lessons from Forming and Sustaining a Research Community

Sub-fields within I.S. generate benefits for their participants and for the larger research discipline. Sub-fields can also fragment and compete with the broad field they emerge from. One of the largest and most active research groups in the ICIS community is the researchers examining Information Systems Economics. After 20 years of the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE), this is a moment to identify what sub-fields contribute in I.S. and look forward to what sub-fields can do for ICIS researchers and I.S. practice in the future