Educational Needs as Perceived by IS and End-User Personnel: A Survey of Knowledge and Skill Requirements

One of the fundamental issues inherent to both practice and academia emanates from the need to know what knowledge and skills personnel must possess to successfully perform their jobs. This article addresses this issue by performing an educational needs assessment, one that considers the deficiencies of both IS and end-user personnel. To this end, an instrument has been developed, tested, and completed by 275 employees within eight different organizations. The findings of this study suggest that among six different knowledge and skill areas, both IS and end-user personnel are most deficient in the area of “general IS knowledge” (e.g., IS policies and plans, fit between IS and organization, etc.). In addition, IS personnel appear to be in need of more “organizational knowledge” (e.g., organizational goals and objectives, critical success factors, etc.). End users, on the other hand, seem to require more IS-related skills (e.g., data access, use of software packages, etc.). The implications of these findings for practitioners and academicians focus on finding ways to improve the education and training programs currently in place.