Beyond the Help Desk: Creating a Culture of Service in the IT Organization

This ECAR research bulletin describes strategies used by the IT organizations at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Dickinson University to develop a plan for improving the culture of service within those organizations. Inspired by Mark Sheehan’s 2007 ECAR study, Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education, the authors explore how the broader group of IT and library staff members understood the service culture of their organizations. The strategies for the early part of the plan included a survey of staff to establish a baseline understanding of staff perceptions as well as a literature search to find good models in higher education and in other service industries.

Citation for this work: Agee, Anne Scrivener and Robert Renaud. “Beyond the Help Desk: Creating a Culture of Service in the IT Organization.” (Research Bulletin, Issue 17). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2009, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.