Global Impacts of ICT-Qualified Worker Shortage: Exploring the Need for Educational, Firm-Based, and Societal Investments in ICT Human Capital

In today’s Industry 4.0 environment, recruiting, training, and retaining highly qualified ICT-ready professionals remains a problem for many organizations including educational, governmental, healthcare, and business organizations. Through an in-depth literature review and syntheses, we respond to the question “how can we develop ICT human capital in our global economy in an equitable, inclusive, and purposeful manner such that not organizations thrive, but also to promote social justice and equity in our global economy?” In particular, the paper analyses the major obstacles that need to be overcome in order to direct educational aspirations towards STEM education pathways, so that the demand for more people trained in ICT can be met, describing the inequalities of opportunity and the transformations, both internal and external, to which higher education institutions are called to undergo. To accomplish this broad research goal, we intend to utilize a grounded theory approach, utilizing rich data that informs the development of frameworks that address the ICT human capital shortage as well as encouraging equitable, inclusive and purposeful methods to diversify ICT-qualified workers. Data that informs this work will be drawn from varied organizations, including HEI, business, government, and healthcare and education.