IT Management: How IT Managers Gain IT knowledge

Authors: Jes Søndergaard, Torben Tambo, Christian Koch

Abstract:

It is not a secret that, IT management has become more and more and integrated part of almost all organizations. IT managers posses an enormous amount of knowledge within both organizational knowledge and general IT knowledge. This article investigates how IT managers keep themselves updated on IT knowledge in general and looks into how much time IT managers spend on weekly basis searching the net for new or problem solving IT knowledge. The theory used in this paper is used to investigate the current role of IT managers and what issues they are facing. Furthermore a research is conducted where 7 IT managers in medium sized and large Danish companies are interviewed to add further focus on the role of the IT manager and to focus on how they keep themselves updated. Beside finding substantial need for more research, IT managers – generalists or specialists – only have limited knowledge resources at hand in updating their own knowledge – leaving much initiative to vendors.

Keywords: CIO, information Technology, Knowledge, Management, Organization

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1058777

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[24] G. S. Smith, Straight to the top Becoming a world class CIO, John Wiley & Sons. Hoboken, New Jersey, 2006. Jes Sndergaard is M.Sc. in Technoloy-based Business Development and has worked research assistant at Aarhus University, Institute of Business and Technology. His interests include management of technology, business development, information systems and sustainable energy. Torben Tambo is M.Sc., GDBA and Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Institute of Business and Technology. Previous to this he served 17 years in IT, management and consultant roles within manufacturing and trading companies. Research interests include information systems, enterprise architecture and supply chain management. Christian Koch is Professor, PhD at Aarhus University, Institute of Business and Technology, and has a background of many years of research and studies with information systems, enterprise resource planning systems, technology and organisation. Has published in Technovation, International Journal of Project Management, and various journals within construction management.