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This study aims to highlight the issues and concerns specific to information professionals (IPs) in academic libraries of Pakistan. It identifies the problems that academic libraries face in attracting and hiring competent IPs along with the strategies to be used to recruit and retain them in the dynamic environment of academia. Moreover, it provides a list of required skills that employers would look for while hiring IPs in academic settings.

Semi-structured interviews of 20 library leaders involved in hiring process were conducted from 16 public and private sector universities.

Findings identified interpersonal skills as the most desired followed by the subject knowledge and IT orientation while hiring IPs for the present and foreseeable future. Good salary package, conducive work environment with opportunities for learning and continuing professional development and speedy promotion were significant perceived factors to attract and retain the talented professionals in university library settings.

The study would be helpful for policymakers and administrators to hire and retain the IPs capable of developing user-centered services in academic libraries.

Practical suggestions made for hiring, retaining and developing IPs in academic libraries would be beneficial for other developing countries with similar context. It addressed an unexplored area in the context of a developing country and reported original research that will assist policy and decision-makers to hire and retain competent human resources.

The job market of library and information professionals has expanded from academic to industrial, special and business libraries. The unique nature of the organizations, their data and clientele demand a different set of competencies. The purpose of this study is to explore the competencies of information professionals from the perspectives of business employers – a comparatively new job place for the library and information management professionals.

Exploratory sequential mixed methods approach was used to meet objectives of this study in two phases. In the first phase, qualitative data was extracted from panel discussion. Themes were extracted from this qualitative data. In the second phase, a questionnaire was designed which was based on qualitative themes. The instrument contained the nine-point Likert type scale and was filled by the business and industry human resource managers. The quantitatively gathered data were analysed while using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences SPSS version 22.

The findings of this study indicate that work coordination, knowledge of intellectual property rights, online searching ability, leadership qualities, trustworthiness and background knowledge of the prospective organizations are the basic competencies required by the business employers.

This study will guide the students on which qualities they are required to obtain to qualify for jobs of information professionals in the current employment sector. Additionally, it will provide guidelines to the continuous education programme designers, prompting them to include in their trainings the vital qualities of candidates required by the current job market.

This is the maiden study that has explored the competencies of library and information management professionals through exploratory sequential mixed methods.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether and to what extent managerial skills are taught in Schools of Information globally, and whether these courses are sufficient preparation for management positions in information professions.

This is an exploratory research paper. Phase one included a literature review and a review of curricula in Schools of Information in 26 countries to see if management courses were given, as well as the type and number of courses. Phase two consisted semi‐structured interviews with 15 directors of information services in the international sector in the Geneva, Switzerland region.

The paper concludes that 73 per cent of the schools reviewed do offer management courses, although there is a wide variation between countries and schools. In the interviews it was found that 80 per cent of the directors learned their management skills on the job and 66 per cent in management development through their institutions. All interviewees said their academic courses, though relevant, were insufficient. They gave recommendations of which competencies were needed in curricula for information professionals.

Studies on management education have been done mostly in North American, ALA‐accredited information schools. The rest of the world needs to be researched and to find its voice. The paper is relevant to schools of information globally, as well as to information professionals in the field.

This study proposes to put forward and test a theoretical model that demonstrates the influence of top management support on an organization's security culture and level of security policy enforcement.

The project used a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The grounded theory approach was used to analyze responses to open‐ended questions answered by 220 certified information system security professionals. Using these responses, a survey instrument was developed. Survey results were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Evidence suggests that top management support is a significant predictor of an organization's security culture and level of policy enforcement.

During instrument validation, a special effort removed survey items that appeared overly intrusive to the respondents. In this endeavor, an expert panel of security practitioners evaluated all candidate items on a willingness‐to‐answer scale. While especially helpful in security, this scale may be used in other research domains.

Practitioners should understand the impact of top management support on achieving security effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study, low levels of executive support will produce an organizational culture less tolerant of good security practices. Low levels of support will diminish the level of enforcement of existing security policies.

Researchers developed original scales to measure levels of top management support, policy enforcement, and organizational culture. The scales demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity scores.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise previous studies to develop a theoretical framework useful to describe and classify competitive intelligence (CI) practices. It is applied to study CI practices developed by Spanish universities, comparing usual practices with those developed during the process of adaptation of degrees to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), with strong challenges.

The research employs a mixed-methods approach (semi-structured interviews and questionnaires) developed in two phases. It has focused on the academic offer, which represents 46.35 per cent of the degrees presented in 2009, belonging to 90.16 per cent of Spanish universities.

The results reveal predominance of incipient and reactive practices, oriented to the tactical level. During the adaptation process, these practices evolved due to the perception of the involvement of universities in the adaptation process. In addition, the proposed theoretical framework could be a tool to study CI both in other university management areas and other kind of organisations.

This research has been applied only to a critic incident: the design of university academic offer to be adapted to the EHEA. More studies about CI practices in other areas of universities should be done, using the same framework proposed in this study.

This framework based on research done in business sector can be applied to any kind or organisations, including NGO and public sectors.

Management tools used in the business sector, such as CI, have been adopted by Higher Educations Institutions, but while CI has been studied in depth in the business sector, it has scarcely been studied in higher education. This framework can be applied to any kind or organisations.

Explores managerial professionals′ views on gender‐based preferential hiring versus merit selection, and examines whether their views are affected by different information frames presented to them. Results show that, although the managers sampled in the study opposed preferential hiring in general, they valued a number of the consequences of preferential hiring. Information frame had no effect on male manager′s views. However, female managers were significantly persuaded by information emphasizing advantages of gender‐based hiring.

Information security has become an essential entity for organizations across the globe to eliminate the possible risks in their organizations by conducting information security risk assessment (ISRA). However, the existence of numerous different types of risk assessment methods, standards, guidelines and specifications readily available causes the organizations to face the daunting tasks in determining the most suitable method that would augur well in meeting their needs. Therefore, to overcome this tedious process, this paper suggests collective information structure model for ISRA.

The proposed ISRA model was developed by deploying a questionnaire using close-ended questions administrated to a group of information security practitioners in Malaysia (N = 80). The purpose of the survey was to strengthen and add more relevant additional features to the existing framework, as it was developed based on secondary data.

Previous comparative and analyzed studies reveals that all the six types of ISRA methodologies have features of the same kind of information with a slight difference in form. Therefore, questionnaires were designed to insert additional features to the research framework. All the additional features chosen were based on high frequency of more than half percentage agreed responses from respondents. The analyses results inspire in generating a collective information structure model which more practical in the real environment of the workplace.

Generally, organizations need to make comparisons between methodologies and decide on the best due to the inexistence of agreed reference benchmark in ISRA methodologies. This tedious process leads to unwarranted time, money and energy consumption.

The collective information structure model for ISRA aims to assist organizations in getting a general view of ISRA flow and gathering information on the requirements to be met before risk assessment can be conducted successfully. This model can be conveniently used by organizations to complete all the required planning as well as to select the suitable methods to complete the ISRA.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the decision of former traditional K‐12 teachers in the USA who chose a new career path in academic libraries. It focuses on their successes and challenges in higher education settings.

This study uses a qualitative‐methods approach which includes a brief questionnaire.

Findings indicate that former K‐12 teachers leave their traditional teaching professions due to bureaucracy but because they enjoy teaching, they seek other opportunities in education. The research also reveals that many of the participants continue to use their K‐12 training in their current instruction positions as academic librarians.

Future research on this topic should look into more proactive ways of recruiting K‐12 teachers into positions of information literacy instructor in academic libraries.

Those responsible for hiring information literacy instruction librarians will learn the benefits of hiring former K‐12 teachers. The paper will also help encourage academic library leaders to help fund more training opportunities for information literacy librarians.

All around the USA, academic libraries are fostering opportunities for their students to become information literate in the hopes of helping students succeed in college‐level research. As more former K‐12 teachers are hired in higher education academic instruction librarian positions, it could help students make a smoother transition from high school to college‐level researchers.

This research shows that former K‐12 teachers could be a valuable asset to higher education academic libraries.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological qualitative research study is to understand the essence of what it is like to be an information systems professional working in the USA while managing and defending against social engineering attacks on an organization. The findings add to the information system (IS) body of literature by uncovering commonly shared attitudes, motivations, experiences and beliefs held by IS professionals who are responsible for protecting their company from social engineering attacks.

This is a qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study that was developed to gain a deeper understanding about the essence of what it is like to be an IS professional defending a US business against social engineering attacks. This research design is used when sharing the experiences of study participants is more important than presenting the interpretations of the researcher. To target participants from the industries identified as regularly targeted by social engineers, purposive sampling was used in conjunction with the snowball sampling technique to find additional participants until saturation was reached.

Ten themes emerged from the data analysis: (1) foster a security culture, (2) prevention means education, (3) layered security means better protection, (4) prepare, defend and move on, (5) wide-ranging responsibilities, (6) laying the pipes, (7) all hands on deck, (8) continuous improvement, (9) attacks will never be eliminated and (10) moving pieces makes it harder. The ten themes, together, reveal the essence of the shared experiences of the participants with the phenomenon.

Understanding how to defend an enterprise from social engineering attacks is an international issue with implications for businesses and IS professionals across the world. The findings revealed that to prevent social engineer attacks, all employees – IS and non-IS professionals alike – must be unified in their desire to protect the organization. This means IS professionals and organizational leadership must establish a strong security culture, not only through layered technology and electronic controls but also through open communication between all departments and continuously engaging, training and reinforcing social engineering education, policies, procedures and practices with all employees.