The hard side in total quality management of measurement and data analysis can only be successful if it is replenished with the soft side, the people side. This conclusion has serious consequences for the education of professionals, especially managers. Managers should be trained in soft skills, trained in managing themselves and their relations with others. The recent research done by Meduprof-S focuses on the question which skills are needed and on the extent to which business schools quality standards consider soft skills to be important in the education of managers .
DOCUMENT
Het aantal banen neemt toe. Jaarlijks ontstaan er volgens CBS (2019) ongeveer 900 duizend vacatures. Deze keer is de verandering op de arbeidsmarkt niet het resultaat van één enkele factor, maar eerder een combinatie van vijf factoren: snelle technologische vooruitgang, diepgaande veranderingen in gezondheid en demografie, een groeiende economie, toenemende globalisering en belangrijke maatschappelijke veranderingen - die samen een groot deel van wat we als vanzelfsprekend beschouwen, fundamenteel transformeren (Gratton, 2011). Digitalisering en automatisering spelen een grote rol bij deze veranderingen. Er zijn optimistische voorspellingen dat nieuwe technologieën de arbeidsmarkt ten goede komen. Technologie verlaagt bijvoorbeeld de werkdruk. We zouden door technologie zelfs naar een kortere werkweek kunnen en nieuwe banen erbij krijgen, zodat niemand ongewild zonder werk komt te zitten (Ford, 2015; Giang, 2015; Mahdawi, 2017; MGI, 2017). Echter, de angst dat automatisering banen over gaat nemen en er een tekort aan werk gaat ontstaan, is ook een veelgehoorde zorg (Alexis, 2017; Ford, 2015; Giang, 2015; MGI, 2017; WRR. 2013).
DOCUMENT
While many researchers have investigated soft skills for different roles related to business, engineering, healthcare and others, the soft skills needed by the chief information security officer (CISO) in a leadership position are not studied in-depth. This paper describes a first study aimed at filling this gap. In this multimethod research, both the business leaders perspective as well as an analysis of CISO job ads is studied. The methodology used to capture the business leaders perspective is via a Delphi study and the jobs adds are studied using a quantitative content analysis. With an increasing threat to information security for companies, the CISO role is moving from a technical role to an executive role. This executive function is responsible for information security across all layers of an organisation. To ensure compliance with the security policy among different groups within the company, such as employees, the board, and the IT department, the CISO must be able to adopt different postures. Soft skills are thus required to be able to assume this leadership role in the organisation. We found that when business leaders were asked about the most important soft skills the top three consisted out of 'communication', ‘leadership’ and 'interpersonal' skills while 'courtesy' was last on the list for a CISO leadership role.
MULTIFILE
Times a changing. Mangement roles change. Quailty managers more an more are change managers and need soft skills to perform well.
MULTIFILE
For IT services companies, delivering high quality IT services is of eminent importance. IT service quality drives customer satisfaction, which in its turn drives firm performance. It is this link that is addressed in this paper: How can the performance of customer service delivery teams be improved, when looked upon from the perspective of firm performance? Based on the literature on excellent performing organizations, we apply the concepts that, according to Collins (2001), drove the development of 'good' companies to 'great' companies to a case study of an under performing service delivery team that developed into an excellent performing service delivery team. The lessons from this study were that most of the drivers behind the performance improvement of this team were in fact 'soft' factors that concerned the human side of the team more than the organizational, procedural or structural measures.
DOCUMENT
Businesses today are facing ever greater competition. Products and services need to be delivered faster, more efficiently and at lower price. Companies are forced to supply customised products: demand-oriented production. In order to meet this changing demand, companies have to subcontract and collaborate. An efficient web service system that defines tasks and roles is indispensable for achieving this. The spiders in the web are people. People have a number of tools to hand that enable them to design or adapt the process-oriented organisation. In this regard, people have access to an ever increasing number of standardised process objects (web services) that are available via the Internet.
DOCUMENT
To examine the association of adolescents' snack and soft drink consumption with friendship group snack and soft drink consumption, availability of snacks and soft drinks at school, and personal characteristics, snack and soft drink consumption was assessed in 749 adolescents (398 girls, 351 boys, age 12.4 - 17.6 years), and their friends, and snack and soft drink availability at schools was measured. In regression analysis, consumption by friends, snack and soft drink availability within school, and personal characteristics (age, gender, education level, body mass index) were examined as determinants of snack and drink consumption. Snack and soft drink consumption was higher in boys, soft drink consumption was higher in lower educated adolescents, and snack consumption was higher in adolescents with a lower body weight. Peer group snack and soft drink consumption were associated with individual intake, particularly when availability in the canteen and vending machines was high. The association between individual and peer snack consumption was strong in boys, adolescents with a lower education level, and adolescents with lower body weights. Our study shows that individual snack and soft drink consumption is associated with specific combinations of consumption by peers, availability at school, and personal characteristics.
DOCUMENT
The shortage for ICT personal in the EU is large and expected to increase. The aim of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of the roles and competences needed, so that education curricula can be better aligned to evolving market demand by answering the research question: Which competence gaps do we need to bridge in order to meet the future need for sufficiently qualified personnel in the EU Software sector? In this research, a mixed method approach was executed in twelve European countries, to map the current and future needs for competences in the EU. The analyses shows changes in demand regarding technical skills, e.g. low-code and a stronger focus on soft skills like communication and critical thinking. Besides this, the research showed educational institutes would do well to develop their curricula in a practical way by integration of real live cases and work together with organizations.
MULTIFILE
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the AI-related skills and roles needed to bridge the AI skills gap in Europe. Using a mixed-method research approach, this study investigated the most in-demand AI expertise areas and roles by surveying 409 organizations in Europe, analyzing 2,563 AI-related job advertisements, and conducting 24 focus group sessions with 145 industry and policy experts. The findings underscore the importance of both general technical skills in AI related to big data, machine learning and deep learning, cyber and data security, large language models as well as AI soft skills such as problemsolving and effective communication. This study sets the foundation for future research directions, emphasizing the importance of upskilling initiatives and the evolving nature of AI skills demand, contributing to an EU-wide strategy for future AI skills development.
MULTIFILE
Recently, the job market for Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineers has exploded. Since the role of AI engineer is relatively new, limited research has been done on the requirements as set by the industry. Moreover, the definition of an AI engineer is less established than for a data scientist or a software engineer. In this study we explore, based on job ads, the requirements from the job market for the position of AI engineer in The Netherlands. We retrieved job ad data between April 2018 and April 2021 from a large job ad database, Jobfeed from TextKernel. The job ads were selected with a process similar to the selection of primary studies in a literature review. We characterize the 367 resulting job ads based on meta-data such as publication date, industry/sector, educational background and job titles. To answer our research questions we have further coded 125 job ads manually. The job tasks of AI engineers are concentrated in five categories: business understanding, data engineering, modeling, software development and operations engineering. Companies ask for AI engineers with different profiles: 1) data science engineer with focus on modeling, 2) AI software engineer with focus on software development , 3) generalist AI engineer with focus on both models and software. Furthermore, we present the tools and technologies mentioned in the selected job ads, and the soft skills. Our research helps to understand the expectations companies have for professionals building AI-enabled systems. Understanding these expectations is crucial both for prospective AI engineers and educational institutions in charge of training those prospective engineers. Our research also helps to better define the profession of AI engineering. We do this by proposing an extended AI engineering life-cycle that includes a business understanding phase.
LINK
