IT Skills Portability and Values for Individuals: Resource-Based View and Institutional View Perspectives

The recent Internet commerce boom rekindles the issues on both how firms manage their IT skills portfolio for rapidly changing business environments and how individual IT professionals manage their IT skills for the needs of their firm as well as for advancing their career. This paper looks at how individual IT professionals manage their IT skills portfolios by focusing on the mobility or “portability” of these skills from the resource- based view (RBV) and institutional view (IV) perspectives. First, the paper analyzes the sources of IT skill portability. Second, it proposes a framework that analyzes the relationship between (a) individual’s IT skill portability and (b) the value for individual IT professionals. For this relationship, the framework identifies seven moderating factors – five organizational factors and two market factors.