Educating knowledge workers for e-business and web services

Abstract

E-business and web services now have an established and significant presence in the global marketplace. The growth of e-business and web services has been substantial. One of the constraints on this growth is the availability of knowledge workers with the skills necessary to design, implement and support e-business systems via web services. To sustain the continued growth of e-business in the future, a workforce with e-business knowledge and skills will be necessary. This paper addresses the e-workforce constraint by presenting a model for a graduate certificate program designed to develop the knowledge and skills needed to sustain e-business and further opportunities for innovation in e-business. We report on a successful program in Web Services that recognizes the interdisciplinary nature of services management and is designed for business and management professionals. This paper will discuss the motivation and design of the program, preliminary results as well as challenges faced in offering such a program.