DIY-IT: an empirical study of website development staffing by non-profit organizations

Abstract

Scholars have extensively examined the role of information technology workers through the prism of the corporate world, a viewpoint open to bias tending toward constructs that deal exclusively with professional IT workers. The purpose of this study is to investigate a significant area that has been under explored, namely, the use of non-traditional or "do-it-yourself IT" workers, and to explore the possibility that with the advent of more user-friendly and ubiquitous IT productivity tools, the use of non-professional IT staff, or "DIY-IT," is becoming an attractive and viable option, particularly for non-profit organizations and small businesses. This study will examine the impact of web design software products and cost-effective hosting solutions on website development and website maintenance staffing by non-profit arts organizations and by small businesses. A hypothesis is that in the non-profit world, DIY-IT is performed by volunteers and by paid employees who are not primarily IT workers and whose primary job descriptions focuses on broader tasks. In small businesses, it is hypothesized that DIY-IT is performed by staff who are not primarily IT workers. The extent of DIY-IT is of interest, as well as its impact, i.e., are organizations more satisfied with their websites when professional IT personnel are involved, how does the degree of sophistication vary as a function of the type of IT staffing, can the value of professional IT personnel be quantified, and are there circumstances when DIY-IT is more appropriate in fulfilling the needs of the organization? As this research progresses, a goal is to develop a model that can be generally applied to IT staffing by non-profit organizations and small businesses.