Management's knowledge of information technology

Information Technology (IT) has always been the playground of technical specialists. In this paper we argue no changes in this respect, but rather that the management of an organisation becomes aware of what the technical specialists are actually doing. This cannot be achieved by teaching tomorrow's managers a few of the technical skills. We see the role of IT in management education as threefold. First, management education in general has to focus on information and knowledge and their influence on management capabilities and possibilities. Building upon this general background, advanced courses should cover the challenges of II and the opportunities and problems on a general management level. Second, a specialisation within management education could be the information analyst, who can participate in the analysis and design of business processes and their supporting information systems. The actual construction of these systems is best left to software engineers. Third, another kind of specialisation within management should be the functional specialist with in-depth informational knowledge. In this area one can position experts in financial or logistic systems. In an attempt to capture the future course of information and knowledge education, the developing field of knowledge management is introduced briefly. Finally, the consequences of our analysis for management education are discussed.