Positioning e-skills within an organisation: An information systems management viewpoint

Abstract

The intersection of business and IT in an organisation requires people with diverse business- and technology-related competences and skills, commonly referred to as ‘e-competences’ and ‘e-skills’. The positioning of these competences within an IT function in an organisation is (arguably) well defined, but their place in other areas of business managerial concern in an organisation, such as business processes or organisational strategy, is still not sufficiently clear. As e-skills and e-competences are inevitably associated with the use of organisational information systems (IS), this paper reports an initial study aimed at positioning these competences and skills within an organisation from an IS perspective. The positioning was done by examining models of IS, e-competences and e-skills and identifying their possible areas of intersection, which resulted in mapping these competences and skills to the areas of managerial concern in an organisation – as seen from an IS perspective. This mapping has revealed an initial understanding of how business value, here seen as business benefits, is created by using the e-skills and e-competences (supposedly) possessed by employees throughout an organisation.