Barely managing: Attitudes of information technology professionals on management technique

Abstract

This paper presents findings from exploratory research into the attitudes of information technology (IT) professionals about the role management has played or could play in computing activities. It also looks at the subsidiary questions of what might be desirable preparation of managers for directing IT professionals, what the barriers to this are, and how this preparation might be stimulated. The paper is based on in-depth, ethnographic interviews conducted in 2001 with 30 IT professionals from both public and private sectors in New Mexico.

Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by a grant from the Alfred Sloan Foundation (Grant B2000-72). An earlier version of this paper was presented at 63rd National Conference of American Society for Public Administration in 2002. The authors would like to thank those IT professionals who took time from their long days to share their views and work histories.

Notes

1 IT is not a single technology; instead, it is a combination of four basic technologies: tools to access information, telecommunications linkages (including networks), information processing hardware and software, and storage media (Keen, 1995). The foundation of IT is the ability to represent text, data sound, and visual information digitally.