Competence of IT professionals in e-business venture teams: The effect of experience and expertise on preference structure

The ascension of e-business has significantly changed competence requirements of information technology (IT) professionals. In this paper, we derive a competence set that addresses these changes and investigate individual preferences for specific competence components within e-business teams. We connect these preferences and competence valuation with personal characteristics of team members that were found to influence the perception of competence requirements in previous research. To empirically address this issue, we apply a Web-based questionnaire with adaptive conjoint measurement. By cluster analysis, we identify four competence profiles preferred by team members. Data from 176 respondents suggest that experience is related to the preferred profile, whereas expertise is related to overall competence valuation. Our research suggests that immature teams should consider that preferences regarding IT professionals may change with venture maturation, whereas interdisciplinary teams should discuss each member's value contribution. Considering our results, these suggestions could optimize the process of team composition.