Critical soft skills for information and knowledge management practitioners in the fourth industrial revolution

South African Journal of Information Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Critical soft skills for information and knowledge management practitioners in the fourth industrial revolution
 
Creator Mabe, Kagiso Bwalya, Kelvin J.
 
Subject — soft skills; the fourth industrial revolution; information and knowledge management; information science; Delphi study
Description Background: Many technology jurisdictions have peddled the narrative that the key determinant for an innovative and sustainable fourth industrial revolution (4IR) environment is possessing hard technical skills. Hard technical skills are important to design the actual 4IR-based applications. Postmodernity demands that appropriate soft skills complement the hard skills to effectively integrate technology into various socio-economic value chains. In fact, soft skills are slowly becoming one of the critical enablers to harness the promise of the 4IR.Objectives: This research article aimed to critically understand the soft skills considered to be essential in the South African context by different information and knowledge management (IKM) practitioners. The aims and objectives of the study were to fill the gap where other disciplines have specified soft skills whilst IKM does not. This study looked to identify soft skills to allow IKM practitioners an opportunity to identify and develop these skills.Method: This research was designed based on the Delphi study principles and further used a systematic and targeted literature review to allow the researchers to make logical conclusions deductively. The authors followed a multimethod approach and analysed data using content analysis.Results: The study results have demonstrated that soft skills are considered significantly more important than hard skills in South Africa. The study identified 57 total skills. However, only 17 had consensus from experts.Conclusion: This study provides insights into the critical success skills needed to harness the socio-economics brought about by the 4IR. Further studies are required in different contextual settings to understand the global skills pertinent to the 4IR.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2022-06-24
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajim.v24i1.1519
 
Source SA Journal of Information Management; Vol 24, No 1 (2022); 11 pages 1560-683X 2078-1865
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1519/2191 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1519/2192 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1519/2193 https://sajim.co.za/index.php/sajim/article/view/1519/2194
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Kagiso Mabe, Kelvin J. Bwalya https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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