An Investigation of Personality Traits in Relation to Job and Career Satisfaction of Information Technology Professionals

Career Satisfaction in Maximising Professionals of Indian IT Industry: Mediating Roles of Contrasting Responses Based on Counterfactual Reasoning

This study conceptualises career maximisation and its consequences in the Indian Information Technology (IT) workforce, a globally significant non-Western talent pool. It examined how maximising tendency in career decision-making (MT-CD) mediated career satisfaction through two contrasting responses based on counterfactual reasoning―career regret (dysfunctional) and career adaptability (functional). The study comprised of two parts. In Study 1, scales for MT-CD and career regret were developed and initially validated using a 172 respondents’ dataset. In Study 2, data from 434 respondents were analysed for psychometric evaluation and further validation of scales along with determining hypothesised relationships. Two dimensions of MT-CD were identified―‘state of internal career ambiguity’ and ‘striving for career excellence’. Both attributes produced career regret (an aggregated measure of ‘corporate regrets’, ‘career choice regrets’ and ‘developmental regrets’ dimensions), decreasing career satisfaction. Only ‘striving for career excellence’ led to career adaptability, which subsequently increased career satisfaction. Altogether, career regret competed with career adaptability, supressing its positive indirect effect on maximising ITPs’ career satisfaction. This study expands the current empirical research on career maximisation into non-Western contexts, adding unique knowledge to the Indian IT workforce’s vocational literature.

Influence of Career Adaptability on Career Satisfaction and Turnover Intention of IT Professionals

The information technology sector is characterized by a dynamic environment with layoffs, although concurrently generating potential opportunities. To absorb unpredicted and hasty occupational shocks amid such volatility as well as possibilities, human capital in Indian IT industry have been striving hard to construct their capabilities that emanate from career adaptability. Current research endeavors to measure career adaptability and linkage with turnover intentions, career satisfaction, and job performance in the context of the Indian IT sector. Data were gathered from 401 Indian IT professionals. The findings revealed that career adaptability has a negative impact on turnover intention and positive impact on career satisfaction. Turnover intentions of Indian IT professionals are due to their career adaptability. Finally, a profound knowledge of the association of career adaptability with turnover intentions may facilitate us in discovering techniques to assist human capital in guiding the growingly multifarious career path, thus forestalling turnover intention and enhancing satisfaction.

The Circumplex Model for Structuring Career Anchors of the IT/IS Personnel

A quantitative study involving Mainland China (the PRC), Taiwan, India, the UAE, and the US, five areas with 852 responses of IT/IS personnel data towards building a more suitable Circumplex Career Anchor Model for IT/IS personnel, and to test a research model of a reorganized (quadrant) anchors. The bureaucratic, protean, careerist, and the social four quadrant anchors, have a significantly positive effect on career satisfaction of the IT/IS personnel. The bureaucratic, protean, and social three quadrant anchors have a significantly positive effect on job satisfaction of the IT/IS personnel, but not on the careerist quadrant anchor. Thus, the result of this study not only provided a reorganized (quadrant) anchors framework for suitable IT/IS personnel, but also combined job satisfaction, career satisfaction, and turnover intention to extend the Circumplex career anchor model to be a more complete research model.

Personality in information systems professions: identifying archetypal professions with suitable traits and candidates' ability to fake-good these traits

Purpose

The importance of information systems (IS) professions is increasing. As personality–job fit theory claims, employees must have suitable personality traits for particular IS professions. However, candidates can try to fake-good on personality tests towards the desired personality type. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify archetypal IS professions, their associated personality types and examine the reliability of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test in IS recruitment decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors reviewed academic literature related to IS professions to identify job archetypes and personality traits for IS professions. Then, the authors conducted an experiment with 452 participants to investigate whether candidates can fake-good on personality tests when being tested for a particular IS profession.

Findings

The identified job archetypes were IS project manager, IS marketing specialist, IS consultant, IS security specialist, data scientist and business process analyst. The experimental results show that the participants were not able to fake-good considerably regarding their personality traits for a particular archetype.

Research limitations/implications

The taxonomy of IS professions should be validated further. The experiment was executed in an educational organisation and not in a real-life environment. Actual work performance was not measured.

Practical implications

This study enables a better identification of suitable candidates for a particular IS profession. Personality tests are good indicators of the candidate's true personality type but must be properly interpreted.

Originality/value

This study enhances the existing body of knowledge on IS professions' archetypes, proposes suitable MBTI personality types for each profession and provides experimental support for the appropriateness of using personality tests to identify potentially suitable candidates.

CSR Perceptions and Career Satisfaction: The Role of Psychological Capital and Moral Identity

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the macro-level has been explored quite extensively, but how it affects employee-level outcomes was only recently researched. This paper draws on insights from the micro-foundation of CSR in explaining the effect of employees’ CSR perceptions on their career satisfaction. Moreover, the mediating role of psychological capital and the moderating role of moral identity are also explored. Data were collected from a cross-industry sample of 383 employees in Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The results show that CSR perceptions positively affected career satisfaction, and psychological capital mediated the effect of CSR perceptions on career satisfaction. Both factors of moral identity (internalized and symbolic) positively moderated the link between CSR perceptions and psychological capital. Finally, the indirect effect of CSR perceptions on career satisfaction via psychological capital was moderated by internalized moral identity and symbolic moral identity. Organizations can enhance career satisfaction by communicating to employees about CSR programs, initiatives, and actions. Moreover, employees should be provided with a working environment that provides them with the most resources so that they can feel confident, hopeful, resilient, and optimistic.

Impact of time pressure on software quality: A laboratory experiment on a game-theoretical model

Research suggests the relationship between time pressure and software quality to be more complex than presumed. While software developers can adjust their output to improve observed performance at the expense of software quality, the latter has been found to increase with time pressure in case of work-pace dependent incentives. An untested, but widely disseminated game-theoretical model seeks to resolve this contradiction and hypothesizes that high rates of time pressure avoid so-called 'shortcuts', which occur in the form of imperfections induced by developers to meet unrealistically tight deadlines. We conduct two laboratory experiments to empirically test this model for the first time. Our results corroborate the model with regard to its suggestion that shortcuts can be reduced if developers perceive unrealistic deadlines as ever-present. However, we also show that the actual critical probability of unrealistic deadlines-the point at which shortcut taking is drastically reduced-is above the theoretical one. Although final conclusions on the impact of time pressure on software quality remain to be drawn, our results suggest that-considering the contingencies of our study-time pressure helps in striving for quality in software projects.

How user personality and social value orientation influence avatar-mediated friendship

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of user personality and vlaues on the number of connections users make, the number of requests for connections that users give out, and the number of connections invitations users receive.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a field study of 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The world’s server logs are used to capture sociometrics about the users and their interaction.

Findings

Findings suggest that personality and values influence the number of friends users make and the number of friendship requests users give out, but not the number of friendship invitations users receive. Only one personality trait – conscientiousness – exhibits homophily.

Originality/value

Perosnality and social value orientation have rarely been studied together in information systems (IS) research, despite research showing the two have an impact on IS relevant constructs. The use of server logs for data capture is novel. Avatar friendship is an under-researched concept in IS.

The Effect of Personality on IT Personnel's Job-Related Attitudes: Establishing a Dispositional Model of Turnover Intention across IT Job Types

Research on IT personnel has observed that the major predictors for turnover intention are job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, less is known about how these predictors are determined and how they vary according to the different job types of IT personnel. Hence, we develop and evaluate a dispositional model of turnover intention across IT job types as the first approach in IT turnover research combining the personality traits of the five-factor model and the basic turnover model found among Western IS professionals into one research model. By the help of the model we analyze the role of personality in IT personnel turnover across four groups of IT roles: consultants, programmers, system engineers, and system administrators. The results of an empirical analysis of 813 IT personnel reveal significant differences across the four groups in terms of personality and job-related attitudes. In terms of personality traits, system engineers rank highest in openness and conscientiousness, IT consultants in extraversion, programmers in neuroticism, and system administrators in agreeableness. In 50% of all cases, personality traits are significant predictors for job-related attitudes. Additionally, they indirectly affect IT personnel turnover intention. Neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness are also important indirect predictors for turnover intention, whereas openness has only a weak effect and agreeableness no measurable effect.

Who really quits?

In response to high turnover rates among IT personnel compared to other groups of professionals, IS research has focused on factors contributing to IT personnel's turnover intention; however, only few studies have focused on actual turnover. To shed more light on actual turnover behavior, this longitudinal study of 125 IT personnel theorizes and analyzes the influence of job-related beliefs on turnover intention and behavior over time. Our results confirm a previously documented turnover intention-behavior gap, finding that 91 out of 125 survey participants indicate a high turnover intention, but that only 27 reported actual turnover behavior within the following 12 months. We further theorize this turnover intention-behavior gap by identifying IT personnel's personality as an important moderating variable for this relation. Specifically, IT personnel more disposed to resisting change translate turnover intentions into actual turnover behavior more seldom than IT personnel less disposed to resisting change. Our study also focuses on how personality influences changes in IT personnel's job-related beliefs and whether or not actual turnover behavior has a positive influence on these beliefs. Our results show that more change-resistant IT personnel change their degrees of job satisfaction and organizational commitment more seldom than less change-resistant personnel and that IT personnel who quit their job change their degree of job satisfaction and organizational commitment more frequently. Our results also show that intentions are a more suitable predictor for less change-resistant individuals than for change-resistant ones.

Personality Traits, Psychological Health, and the Workers' Compensation System

This study explored the influence of personality traits on injured workers' interaction with workers' compensation systems. Data were collected from 89 participant claimants (males, 41; females 48, mean age = 45 years,SD= 10.67 years) at various levels of involvement with the workers' compensation system: previous claimants (n= 39), current claimants (n= 28), and nonclaimant workers (n= 22). Significant differences in personality traits were found between these groups of compensation claimants. Current compensation claimants displayed greater emotional instability and introversion compared with those less acutely involved in the compensation system. Current claimants also experienced clinically significant levels of symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and reported reduced social functioning, relative to previous and nonclaimants, respectively. Overall, subtle differences were found to exist in personality and psychological health between groups of workers at different levels of involvement with the workers' compensation system.

The influence of job characteristics on IT and non-IT job professional’s turnover intentions

Purpose

– Information technology (IT) professionals and their intentions to leave an organization have been studied by researchers; however, these studies do not compare the turnover intentions of IT professionals with non-IT professionals from the same institution. The purpose of this paper is to examine how IT and non-IT job professionals relate to motivational and social job characteristics and their impact on job satisfaction, job performance and turnover intentions.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data were collected from IT-shared services employees through a survey and quantitative analyses were performed.

Findings

– Among the motivational job characteristics, IT professionals experienced greater task significance than the non-IT job holders. With social job characteristics, IT professionals had greater outside interaction than the non-IT professionals. However, the non-IT professionals had greater intentions to leave the IT organization than the IT professionals. Additionally, the study examined the differences of the job characteristics and job outcomes among transactional, transformational, and professional advisory work groups. The professionals and advisory group differed from the other groups in terms of feedback from the job, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions.

Research limitations/implications

– The findings are based on a small sample. However, it highlights some unique differences in how IT and non-IT job occupants perceive job characteristics and job outcomes.

Originality/value

– This study compares job characteristics and job outcomes of IT and non-IT job occupations in the same IT work environment.

Attitudes and Work Environment Factors Influencing the Information Technology Professionals’ Work Behaviors

This study aims to explore individual factors that moderate the relationship between fulfillment of the psychological contract and work behaviors. Two such work behaviors, innovative work (IWB) and organizational citizenship (OCB), impact organizational performance. A sample of 258 information technology (IT) professionals across the U.S. responded to the web-based survey. Research hypotheses were evaluated using multiple regressions. Findings indicated that moderators (self-efficacy, affective commitment, trust, and job satisfaction) significantly affected the relationship between the IT professional’s fulfillment of their psychological contract and their innovative work and organizational citizenship behaviors. Managerial implications for more informed decisions concerning policy and work environment issues are provided and avenues for further research are suggested.