Houston, we've had a problem ... ... offshoring, IS employment and the IS discipline: Perception is not reality

Rudy Hirschheim, Mike Newman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We believe that the information system (IS) discipline has a major and urgent problem to contend with: the general public appears to believe that there are 'no jobs in IS' because of offshoring. They see the offshoring of IS jobs as an inevitable consequence of economic and competitive pressures to drive down labor costs, which leads them to conclude that there is no future in IS. In particular, the discipline is suffering from the erosion of its student base and in this article we explore some of the reasons as to why this is occurring; focussing specifically on the role offshoring may be playing on the perception that there are no jobs in IS. Despite fairly robust figures showing that there are virtually as many IS jobs now as ever before, the public's perception appears to be at odds with this. We thus examine where these beliefs may have come from and in our stakeholder action plan we suggest some radical solutions to align perception with reality. © 2010 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)358-372
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Information Technology
Volume25
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2010

Keywords

  • IS discipline
  • IS employment
  • offshoring
  • outsourcing

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