A Cultural Sociology Perspective on IT Occupational Culture

Cultural studies have played an important role in information systems (IS) research for over 25 years. Past IS studies haveprimarily focused on two levels of analysis: national culture and organizational culture. The gap in our knowledge of cultureis in the area of occupational culture of IT professionals. IT professionals have their own distinct occupational culture withtheir own set of shared values. The ‘strong program’ of cultural sociology will be used to examine and interpret the meaningof the core shared values of the IT occupation. The cultural framework of shared language, shared history, and shared contextwill be utilized in this research-in-progress.