Theoretical framework

Definition of main concepts

Worklife interaction skills

The major challenge with the term "worklife interaction skills" is that nobody seems to know exactly what they include. They appear to mean very different things to different people. Alternative terms that are used to describe similar competencies are those of  "interpersonal communication", "soft skills", "interrelationship skills",  "social skills", or "people skills". These concepts seem to include a number of subjective descriptions of activity that take place between two or more people with the aim to build social connectivity or support in order to achieve successful completion work tasks.

Robles (2012, p 453) defines soft skills as interpersonal qualities, also known as people skills, and personal attributes, including integrity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, social skills, positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and work ethic. Rouse (2014) adds personality traits such as optimism, integrity and a sense of humor, and abilities that can be practiced, such as leadership, empathy, communication and sociability to these skills. Robles (2012, 463) found that communication, integrity, and courtesy were the most important interpersonal skills for success.

In this paper, we prefer to use the term "worklife interaction skills" to describe a skillset that goes beyond sheer communicative effectiveness while at the same time not embracing personal characteristics. They define observable units of social behaviour employed when communicating intentions for the purposes of coordinated interaction with one's interlocutor. Consequently, they embrace social exchange and social (verbal and nonverbal) reciprocity with others in a professional setting. For Neef (2008) they include among others teamwork, mentoring, leadership, networking and interpersonal skills. The knowledge of context-sensitve professional practice appears to be a crucial enabler for effective task competion. 

.... thus being possible to be developed within the few years of a Bachelor study programme in ICT.....

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The required skills seem to have changed only little over the years. A study conducted late 1988 recognized among others the following skills related to worklife interaction: listening, oral communication, writing, interpersonal, negotiation and team work skills. 

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Most spoken communication needs at work are actually informal in nature (Scollon, Scollon & Jones 2012).

Definition of knowledge base

Much thought has been given to the different shapes of professionals, be it with regard to extensive expertise in one specific field (I-shaped), or regarding comprehensive knowledge in two areas pointing to a hybrid expert (H-shaped). Then again, the T-shaped professional appears to possess in-depth knowledge in one field while at the same time drawing on decent know-how in a number of other areas. Finallly, the so-called dash-shaped professional tends to cover a good breadth of generalistic knowledge without being a deep specialist in one specific area. The role assumed by dash-shaped professionals is often found in effective communication (see Donofrio et al, 2010). 

Until recently, there has been little doubt that the ICT industry - in line with the prevailing Information Age- requires knowledge workers that are proficient in one expert area, namely computer science. While experts can be understood as persons with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject area that know the solution to a given issue, specialists tend to be able to solve these problems. It was found that expert performance involves ten years of deliberate practice and experience (Mauboussin, 2005) while expertise also embraces big-picture thinking and a sound understanding of the complexities of knowledge and its related components (Lambert and Clark, 1990). In this context, two forms of expertise have emerged, namely routine expertise and adaptive expertise (Bransford and al, 2005). Routine experts tend to apply acquired competencies with increased efficiency throughout their professional careers whereas adaptive experts are capable of dealing with problems in a flexible, innovative and more conceptual way.

In any case, evidence suggests that a narrowly conceptualised understanding of IT job profiles no longer adequately responds to the requirements of the current labour market and that effective employees need to draw on a variety of qualifications and a skillset that extends that of hard facts. 

Changing job requirements for IT staff

Anglo-American studies have been investigating job requirements for IT personnel for some decades now, which led to the categorisation of the following three computer-related job clusters: a) IT managers, b) system analysts and c) programmers (Cheney and Lyons, 1980). Over the years it was found that the job profiile of IT experts was becoming increasingly complex and versatile (Gallivan et al, 2004). Gallivan et al (2004)  identified that despite the ever-growing need for a broader and more T-shaped knowledge base, job ads still remained rather restrictive and focused on a hard skill-set portofolio. In contrast to Anglophone countries, the Germanic world was found to be less interested in the development of IT staff with only a few investigations looking into this research area (see Riedler and Zwettler, 2014; Arbogast and Keim, 2001; Grob and Lange, 1996). Yet, it was revealed that the key qualifications for IT personnel are on a constant flux with a growing significance in soft skills. While programming languages count among the most crucial hard skill requirements, dedication, readiness to invest effort and time, the willingness to work independently and an increased level of motivations were found to be typical Germanic soft skill features that were sought after among IT professionals (Riedl and Zwettler, 2014). This appears to be much in line with the so-called internalised control (Schroll-Machl, 2013) according to which Germans associate proficiency with reliability, strong willingness to outperfom as well as excellent time management. 

In Finland, however, it was found that....