Computing during Crises
Turner College assistant professor of
management information systems Yaojie Li teamed with scholars from around the globe to publish two studies in the
2021 volume of IEEE Engineering
Management Review, each of which deals with information technology in the
era of COVID-19. In an investigation of how the COVID-19
epidemic affects the U.S. information technology (IT) labor market and,
accordingly, how organizations choose to hire IT employees in the current
situation, Li teamed with Xuan Wang of the University of Texas – Rio Grande
Valley, Thomas Stafford of Louisiana Tech University, and Daqi Xin of Nankai
University in China. This group of
researchers compiled a dataset of 57,847 IT job postings from a large online
employment website during the second half of 2020 in order to examine the
relationships between pandemic severity and work arrangements (remote versus
on-site), work schedules (part-time versus full time), and organizational
sectors (commercial versus government versus nonprofit). The findings indicate that the U.S. IT market
is in turbulence, and for both part-time and remote job postings. According to Li, “for governments and
nonprofit organizations such as hospitals and schools, ‘frontline’ IT support
professionals are highly prized, whereas commercial employers, including tech
giants, are more interested in growing a remote IT workforce.” For the second study, which asserts that effective
crisis response requires sophisticated knowledge management in organizations,
Li is joined by Stafford, Wang and Yi Zhou, an assistant professor in CSU’s TSYS School
of Computer Science. Li, Zhou and their
colleagues propose an architecture – including its steps, outcomes and
implications – in the form of an Agile Crisis Management System involving three
specific stakeholders in order respond to shocks similar to COVID-19. According to Li, “agile systems development
capabilities for crisis response systems are important, particularly for
purposes of tailoring a crisis-oriented knowledge management system to a rapidly
shifting threat landscape.”
Comments
Post a Comment