Knowledge Specialization as a Barrier for Social Business/IT Alignment

Abstract

The article use exploratory approach to identify the potential areas of disagreement between business and IT students, by measuring commonality in their interpretation when they are confronted with the same problem. The main idea behind this article is that lack of holism in education or education in isolation between disciplines is responsible for potential conflicts in management practice. Knowledge specialization in certain fields has strong influence on the individual cognitive structure and his interpretation and perception of the world. Through pre-experimental design authors tested the perception of business and IT students who were treated as surro-gates of business and IT professionals in the real world. The results confirmed different interpretation between the two groups of students on six dimensions. At the end of the paper the results are presented and discussed and propositions for future improvements are suggested.