SMALL BUSINESS EXPECTATIONS OF ENTRY-LEVEL IS SKILLS

Transcription

1 SMALL BUSINESS EXPECTATIONS OF ENTRY-LEVEL IS SKILLS Dr. James F. Roiger, University of Arkansas Monticello, Angela Marsh, University of Arkansas Monticello, ABSTRACT Using the newly adopted IS 2002 Model Curriculum, this study investigates the expectations of small business employers about entry-level skills for Information Systems graduates. The results suggest that small business places the same emphasis on interpersonal, communication, and team skills and on analytical and critical thinking skills as do large businesses. However, unlike the Fortune 500 companies examined by earlier studies, small businesses rank business fundamentals higher than technology skills and business system development skills. Keywords: Employer Expectations, Small Business, Entry-level Skills, IS 2002 Model Curriculum INTRODUCTION The present study attempts to gain information about the desired entry-level skills that smaller businesses require. A small business for the purposes of this study is a company that employs less than 300 employees. Previous studies that have surveyed employers about entrylevel Information System (IS) skills have looked at large companies (1, 6, 9, 10). Several studies have investigated faculty perceptions of skills (8), faculty expectations versus alumni expectations of entry-level skills (2), alumni perceptions of important skills (5, 6), and student perceptions of necessary skills (7). While all of these studies provide benchmarks for an indirect comparison of employer needs of necessary skills, more information is needed on smaller businesses. The faculty suspect, based on anecdotal evidence, that small businesses require a broader learning experience than the specialization desired by many larger companies. Therefore, this study is aimed at small business in a rural region. The study uses the IS 2002 Model Curriculum with its five major categories of skills that an entry-level employee is expected to demonstrate (3, 4). These categories include (a) analytical and critical thinking skills; (b) business fundamentals; (c) interpersonal, communication, and team skills; (d), technology skills; and (e) business system development. Each of the categories includes sub-categories and the sub-categories identify examples of individual skills. The study addresses the following two research questions: Which skills do smaller businesses identify as most important for entry-level employees? Are some categories of skills more important for small business than others? METHOD With the IS 2002 Model curriculum developed by Gorgon et al. (3) and the study of Jones and Tucker (4) as a guide, a survey instrument was developed to measure the perceived Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

2 importance of IS entry-level employee skills for small business employers. The survey included five skill items in the Analytical and Critical Thinking category; six items in the Business Fundamentals category; nine items in the Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills category; eleven items in the Technology Skills category; and eight items in the Business System Development category. The survey also included items about the type of organization, the number of employees, and the major criteria used in hiring. The respondents were asked to indicate the importance of each skill characteristic on a scale of 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). The survey was mailed to 120 businesses in the rural midsouth region where the university is located. Businesses were chosen from the yellow pages for the region and from the membership lists of the Chambers of Commerce located in the adjacent 10 county area where the likelihood existed that information systems positions would be an integral necessity for the business. The surveys were mailed in early December 2003 and stated a final return date of 15 January Thirteen surveys were returned as undeliverable. Nineteen completed surveys were returned by the deadline for a response rate of 18%. RESULTS Table 1 provides a review of the demographic breakdown of the sample for primary business activity and number of employees. Table 1: Respondent Profile Primary Business Activity f % Banking Education Utilities Entertainment/Recreation Forestry Manufacturing Real Estate Retail Missing Number of Employees f % 200 or more Missing Three business activities, banking, education, and utilities, accounted for 70% of the respondents. The number of employees was divided equally above and below 50 employees, with one missing, and these two categories of number of employees were used for comparison. Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

3 The individual skill characteristics were summed for each of the five IS 2002 categories and means and standard deviations were computed. The results are displayed in Table 2. As has been reported by other studies (1, 4, 6, 7) that have examined skill categories, Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills and Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills received the highest rankings. Unlike the other studies, Business Fundamentals category skills received a higher ranking than the IS skills categories. This may be a reflection of the generally small business organization where employees are expected to have a broader-based skill set. Table 2: Mean Rankings of IS 2002 Categories Skill Category Mean s.d. Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills Business Fundamentals Technology Skills Business System Development To determine if very small businesses (less than 49 employees) differed from the small businesses (50 or more employees) in the sample, the mean rakings for the five IS 2002 skill categories was computed for small and very small businesses, The results are displayed in Table Three. Table 3: Comparison of Mean Rankings of IS 2002 Categories by Size of Organization 49 or less Employees 50 or more Employees Skill Mean s.d. Mean s.d. Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills Analytical and Critical Thinking Skills Business Fundamentals Technology Skills Business System Development There was no difference in category rankings although the means for the categories were different. A series of Independent Samples T-Tests were conducted to test whether the differences were significant. The differences between the means for the five categories were not significant. The means and standard deviations of the individual characteristic skills for all businesses are displayed by rank order in Table 4. Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

4 Table 4: Rank Ordering of Characteristic Skills Skill Rank Category* Mean s.d. Dependability 1 ICT Listening 2 ICT Motivation 3 ICT Ability to Learn 4 ICT Team Work 5 ICT Professionalism 6 ACT Ethics 7 ACT Time Management 8 ICT Speaking 9 ICT Conflict Management 10 ICT Writing 11 ICT Critical Thinking 12 ACT Creativity 13 ACT Problem Solving 14 ACT Management 15 BUF Customer Service 16 BSD Presentations 17 TES Word Processing 18 TES Accounting 19 BUF Marketing 20 BUF Operating Systems 21 TES PC Databases 22 TES Spreadsheets 23 TES Security 24 BSD Internet 25 TES Economics 26 BUF Systems Software 27 TES Statistics 28 BUF Business Models 29 BUF Project Management 30 BSD Maintenance 31 BSD Networking (LAN/WAN) 32 TES Deployment 33 BSD Testing 34 BSD Database Design and Administration 35 TES Programming Languages 36 TES Systems Design 37 BSD Web Site Development 38 TES Systems Analysis 39 BSD * Category designators include: ICT - Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills; ACT - Analytical and Critical Thinking category; BUF - Business Fundamentals category; TES - Technology Skills; and BSD - Business System Development. This indicates that small business employers place an emphasis on sound employee skills that all businesses demand, regardless of specialized training in particular concentrations. Notice from Table 4 that all the individual characteristic skills which make up the ICT category and the ACT category are ranked before any other skills, a finding that confirms the results of earlier studies. Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

5 Focusing just on Technology Skills and Business System Development skills, the responses indicate quite a different ordering between small and very small businesses. Tables 5 and 6 display these results. Table 5: Rankings of IS Skills for Organizations with 49 or Less Employees Skill Rank Category Mean s.d. Customer Service 16 BSD Security 18 BSD Presentations 19 TES Internet 20 TES Operating Systems 21 TES Systems Software 23 TES PC Databases 25 TES Word Processing 26 TES Spreadsheets 27 TES Project Management 28 BSD Maintenance 29 BSD Deployment 32 BSD Testing 33 BSD Systems Design 34 BSD Networking (LAN/WAN) 35 TES Database Design and Administration 36 TES Systems Analysis 37 BSD Web Site Development 38 TES Programming Languages 39 TES Table 6: Rankings of IS Skills for Organizations with 50 or More Employees Skill Rank Category Mean s.d. Word Processing 14 TES Presentations 17 TES Spreadsheets 18 TES PC Databases 19 TES Customer Service 20 BSD Operating Systems 23 TES Systems Software 24 TES Internet 27 TES Networking (LAN/WAN) 28 TES Security 30 BSD Database Design and Administration 31 TES Programming Languages 32 TES Project Management 33 BSD Web Site Development 34 TES Maintenance 35 BSD Testing 36 BSD Deployment 37 BSD Systems Design 38 BSD Systems Analysis 39 BSD Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

6 These rankings would indicate that small businesses tend to value broader-based skills such as customer service above specialized skills such as Word Processing and Spreadsheets that are desired by the larger companies. A series of independent samples T-Tests by number of employees was conducted on both the five major skills categories and each of the individual characteristic skills. Only the individual skill of Word Processing was significantly different (t (16) = -3.44, p =.003), and that finding while statistically significant may not be substantively significant. DISCUSSION A major limitation of this study was the small sample size (19 respondents). The statistical analysis must be considered to be unreliable, but several tentative conclusions may be discussed based on the differences between means based on the number of organization employees. A second contributing factor to the results reported was that 70% of the respondents were concentrated in just three organizational types (baking, education, and utilities). These three types of organizations may have atypical entry-level skill needs when compared to organizations in general. The findings of this study indicate that in response to Research Question One, the most important characteristic skills are concentrated in the Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills category and the Analytical and Critical Thinking category and match the findings of studies on Fortune 500 Companies. These two clusters of skills have always been prized and will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future no matter the size of the business. As for Research Question Two, the study suggests that Business Fundamental skills are more important to the smaller, regional and/or local business than to a Fortune 500 Company. While ranking last out of five for the Fortune 500, the Business Fundamental skill set ranks immediately below the most important skill sets of Interpersonal, Communication, and Team Skills and Analytical and Critical Thinking skills for a small business. While these findings are contrary to findings for Fortune 500 Companies, it would suggest that IS employees in small, regional businesses are expected to more fully understand the business environment than their counterparts in a large company. These IS employees may be employed more for adapting commercial off-the-shelf software products to local business needs than in developing new software which is why Business System Development skills ranked last for these smaller businesses. A replication of this study with a larger and a broader-based sample would probably be able to provide more definitive and supportive findings that are hinted at in this small study. REFERENCES 1. Capel, J. J. (Winter ). Entry-level job skills: A survey of employers. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 42 (2), Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems

7 2. Chrysler, E., and Van Auken, S. (Spring 2002). Entry level value versus career value of MIS courses: Faculty expectations versus alumni perceptions. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 42 (2), Gorgone, J. T., Davis, G. B., Valacich, J. S., Topi, H. Feinstein, D. L., and Longenecker, H. E. Jr. (2002). IS 2002: Model curriculum and guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in Information Systems. Association for Information Systems, Atlanta, GA. 4. Jones, C. G., and Tucker, B. R. (2003). An empirical study of the importance of the undergraduate exit competencies specified in the IS 2002 model curriculum. Issues in Information Systems, 4 (2), LaBarre, J. E., and Oberlander, L. (2000). Information systems graduates perceptions of preparation and salary on assimilation into and success on the job. Issues in Information Systems, 1, Lee, S., Yen, D., Havelka, D., and Koh, S. (Summer 2001). Evolution of IS Professionals competency: An exploratory study. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 41 (4), Medlin, B. D., Dinesh, S. D., and Vannoy, S. A. (Fall 2001). Students views of the importance of technical and non-technical skills for successful IT professionals. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 42 (1), Tang, H., Lee, S., and Koh, S. (Winter ). Educational gaps as perceived by IS educators: A survey of knowledge and skill requirements. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 41 (2), Weber, J. E., McIntyre, V. J., and Schmidt, M. (Summer 2001). Explaining IS student and IS industry differences in perceptions of skill importance. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 41 (4), Zhao, J. J. (Spring 2002). Computer end-user skills important for business professionals now and toward Journal of Computer Information Systems, 42 (3), Volume V, No 1, Issues in Information Systems