Influence of the Internet on Information Technology Careers
The growing power and flexibility of the Internet has been well documented in numerous articles. However, the actual impact of the Internet on the workplace has yet to be examined fully, possibly because the Internet is less than five years old. Without a clear understanding of the implications of the Internet on the workplace, it is difficult to lucidly ascertain the subsequent effect on labor/management relations that the Internet is having, or will have on the entire field of labor/management relations. The Internet, however, is old enough to be greatly responsible for the growth of a new industry, that of information technology, a field that requires both a new kind of worker and, it follows, new ways of managing those workers.
In a challenging article, Roehl (1997) points out that as a field, Information Technology is said to include a wide variety of technicians, all the way from software programmers to MIS executives, all geared to one goal. He argues that "successful companies in the year 2000 will have to fundamentally re-evaluate the ways in which they store and use information. Current data management practices will not suffice. Businesses will have to learn to manage not just data, but information, knowledge, and, finally, wisdom" (Roehl, 1997, 26).
The unique fact about this growing field of "information technology," is that it has created for the first time in history, what could be called an industry within industries. For example, whether the company is involved in mining, selling insurance, or a retail store, the basic information worker has an unchanging set of job skills. The first skill is that of computer literacy. Consider this fact. The growing complexity of computer connectivity calls for IT technicians who are well-versed in highly technical electronic terminology, and has made it next to impossible for many senior managers to ...