In spite of the prevalence of IT devices and systems, business firms are having difficulties in teaching general IT skills to their employees. One of the reasons for such difficulties in IT skill training is that IT skill inventories for business embrace a variety of sub-skills and knowledge and individual employees need to acquire different IT sub-skills and knowledge depending on their jobs. Such a variety in IT skill categories and different demands of individual workers has made it difficult to adopt systematic approach in IT skill training for business employees. Thus, companies appear to have trained their employees either by trial and error basis or by the method of \'benchmarking\' with other companies in the area of IT skill training.
The main purpose of this study is to define core competencies of IT skills required for business workers across different job settings.
Based on the literature, a conceptual model to identify IT skills for business and to relate those skills to specific job skills was developed. The model has helped to identify job-related domain knowledge, elemental IT skills, and collaborative communication skills through IT networks as the three most important IT core competencies for business worker to improve their job performance.
To verify the suggested model and the IT core competencies with business workers, a survey questionnaire was administered with thirty training managers from twenty four different companies with various sizes. The result indicated that office skills including utilization of word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs were the most important basic IT skills for business workers regardless of job differences. Moreover, general skills such as collaboration, cooperation, IT-mediated communication, namely digital leadership skills, were found to be the most vital factor in improving productivity across different business settings. Based on the findings of this study, areas for future research were indicated and suggestions for the development of IT skill training programs were made.
Key words: IT core competency, digital leadership, IT skill training