Culture Clash! The Adverse Effects of IT Occupational Subculture on Formative Work Experiences of IT Students

According to Trice (1993), occupational subcultures comprise unique clusters of ideologies, beliefs, cultural forms, and practices that arise from shared educational, personal and work experiences of individuals who pursue the same profession. Results of the analysis of the IT workforce suggest that IT professionals indeed occupy a recognizable “occupational subculture” that crosses and transcends the particular organizational culture in which those IT professionals are embedded (Guzman et.al., 2004). Our study looks at the students’ first IT job experiences in order to track cultural expectations and impressions over time. In addition, this study attempts to confirm a model of occupational culture “socialization” (Elkin, 1960) in a cross sectional study of IT students. Finally, this study will test an inoculation program based on our model that may help to protect higher education students from “culture shock” as they undertake their initial paraprofessional IT work experiences. The goal of our study is to contribute to a better understanding of the occupational subculture of the IT profession and the academic strategies to minimize mismatch between cultural expectations and impressions of IT students.