Examining IT professionals' adaptation to technological change

Effect of risky decision-making and job satisfaction on turnover intention and turnover behavior among information technology employees

Purpose

Turnover in high-tech companies has long been a concern for managers and executives. Recent meta-analyses from the general turnover literature consistently show that job satisfaction is a major attitudinal antecedent to turnover intention and turnover behavior. Additionally, the available research on information technology (IT) employees focuses primarily on turnover intentions and not on a risky decision-making perspective and actual turnover (turnover behavior). The paper aim is to focus on that.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses hierarchical ordinary least squares, process (Preacher and Hayes, 2004) and logistic regression.

Findings

The main predictor of actual turnover is risky decision-making, whereas job satisfaction is the main predictor of turnover intention.

Originality/value

The joint effects of risk and job satisfaction on turnover intention and behavior have not been studied in the IT domain. Hence, this study extends our understanding of turnover in general and particularly among IT employees by studying the combined effect of risk and job satisfaction on turnover intentions and turnover behavior. The study’s theoretical and practical implications are likewise discussed.

How Personality and Communication Patterns Affect Online ad-hoc Teams Under Pressure

Critical, time-bounded, and high-stress tasks, like incident response, have often been solved by teams that are cohesive, adaptable, and prepared. Although a fair share of the literature has explored the effect of personality on various other types of teams and tasks, little is known about how it contributes to teamwork when teams of strangers have to cooperate ad-hoc, fast, and efficiently. This study explores the dynamics between 120 crowd participants paired into 60 virtual dyads and their collaboration outcome during the execution of a high-pressure, time-bound task. Results show that the personality trait of Openness to experience may impact team performance with teams with higher minimum levels of Openness more likely to defuse the bomb on time. An analysis of communication patterns suggests that winners made more use of action and response statements. The team role was linked to the individual's preference of certain communication patterns and related to their perception of the collaboration quality. Highly agreeable individuals seemed to cope better with losing, and individuals in teams heterogeneous in Conscientiousness seemed to feel better about collaboration quality. Our results also suggest there may be some impact of gender on performance. As this study was exploratory in nature, follow-on studies are needed to confirm these results. We discuss how these findings can help the development of AI systems to aid the formation and support of crowdsourced remote emergency teams.

He Said, She Said

The preponderance of the academic research focused on diversity in the IS field has emphasized the perspectives of women and racioethnic minorities. Recent research has found that following the appointment of a female CEO, white male top managers provided less help to colleagues, particularly those identified as minority-status (McDonald, Keeves, & Westphal, 2018). Additionally, Collison and Hearn (1994) assert that white men's universal status and their occupancy of the normative standard state have rendered them invisible as objects of analysis. To develop a more holistic view of the IS workplace, we expand the academic exploration by looking at the challenges men face in the Information Systems (IS) workplace. Using a cognitive lens, we evoke the challenges men perceive they face at work and cast them into revealed causal maps. We then repeat the process evoking women's perspectives of men's challenges. The findings are analyzed using the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) to determine the areas of overlap and identity gaps. This study advances our understanding of the cognitive overlap (and lack thereof) regarding the challenges facing men in the IS field, and provides another step toward developing a more inclusive IS work environment.

A Research Agenda for Social Inclusion in Information Systems

This research agenda for social inclusion in the information systems (IS) field reflects on its emergence and considers the possibilities and pitfalls for future research. This background information will be useful to students and scholars who are interested in conducting social inclusion research, and to readers who are not conducting social inclusion research themselves but who want to support those who do. The publication of this research agenda is also an opportunity to record institutional knowledge about social inclusion research in the information systems field. The focus is on both information systems and technology developers, and on those who use and are affected by information technology. In view of strong voices emerging that would drown out the message of social inclusion, it is all the more important that members of the IS field strengthen their commitment to this research area. In considering social inclusion work going forward, it is important to remember that this research topic is ultimately action-oriented. To resist the forces that would suppress social inclusion in the IT field and in society, it is more important than ever to situate our work "on the ground" so that the real lives of real people will permeate our research. This orientation has implications for the research methods employed as well as for the actions and interventions that follow.

The Influence of Gender-Ethnic Intersectionality on Gender Stereotypes about IT Skills and Knowledge

One line of investigation in attempting to better understand the gender imbalance in the information technology (IT) field is to examine gender stereotypes about the skills and knowledge in the IT profession. A survey of 4046 university students in the United States was conducted to examine gender stereotypes held by contemporary university students (White, Black and Latino men and women) about the skills and knowledge in the IT profession. The Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT was used as the motivating theory for this study because it enabled the incorporation of gender-ethnic intersectionality in the research design. The results revealed that while gender stereotypes about the skills and knowledge involved in the IT profession do exist, they are not uniform across all members of a gender group. The men tended to rate all of the skills as more masculine than did the women respondents. Technical skills were more consistently stereotyped by both men and women in each of the gender-ethnic groups than were nontechnical skills. However, gender stereotypes about nontechnical skills were more contested and revealed both within-gender and within-ethnicity variation. The women students' rating of nontechnical skills as less masculine than the men suggests that these nontechnical skills are being incorporated into the women's sense of gender identity. These results show that gender-ethnic intersectionality provides one important explanation for within-gender variation in gender stereotypes that are held by contemporary university students. These findings suggest promising avenues for interventions to address not only the masculine gender stereotyping of skills in the IT profession, but also differential gender stereotyping of technical vs. nontechnical skills and variation in gender stereotyping by the intersectionality of gender-ethnic groups.

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.

Identifying with the Information Technology Profession

As a profession, IT provides tremendous and irreplaceable resources to organizations. In an effort to understand individual attitudes related specifically to the profession, outside the bounds of any one organization, this paper extends research on the IT professional by examining the relationship between professional identification and profession-level outcomes. Results from more than 300 IT professionals across several organizations indicate professional identification is directly related to key outcome variables including affective commitment to, and satisfaction with, the IT profession. Identification with the IT profession was also found to have a significant indirect effect on intention to leave the profession (also known as turnaway intention). The analysis provides insight into the importance of affect to identification and lends support to previous discussions on the dual nature of identification. Findings maintain that there is more than cognitive belief driving the influence of identification on outcomes for IT professionals. Implications derived from the results of this study and directions for future research on professional identification and the IT professional are discussed.

Perceived obsolescence, organizational embeddedness, and turnover of it workers

Technical skill currency is especially important to IT professionals, yet past research has not integrated perceived obsolescence into the nomological net with organizational embeddedness when investigating IT workers' turnover intentions. Responding to a call for additional research on IT worker turnover we utilize a sample of 1,777 IT workers in a very large and complex IT organization and find that organizational embeddedness explains significant incremental variance beyond the traditional turnover model. The findings presented here show that organizational embeddedness is an essential mediator between perceived skill obsolescence and IT voluntary turnover. Our data also show that the effect of perceived obsolescence on embeddedness is moderated by age. This work provides organizations with insights on why employees choose to stay in an organization, or leave it. We find that both fit and sacrifice dimensions of embeddedness mediate the relationship between perceived skill obsolescence and turnover intention, but that only the sacrifice dimension is a full mediator. These findings suggest that turnover intention is a multivariate issue and that future IT turnover research needs to include other variables such as perceived obsolescence and age. Furthermore there is a need for future research on the role of the specific dimensions of embeddedness. We suggest strategies to reduce voluntary turnover based on the predictive variables in the research model.

Performance and strain levels of it workers engaged in rapidly changing environments

Technological changes ripple through information technology (IT) development environments. IT professionals must often incorporate these changes into their job or risk obsolescence. This paper looks at the effects of technological change, and focuses on job environment conditions which affect individual performance, health, and well-being by applying person-job fit theory to software developers that have moved to an object-oriented development approach. Heretofore, the literature on person-job fit has viewed its effects statically, disregarding the effects of change. The current research recognizes the dynamics of the IT workplace and investigates the impact of a rapidly changing job environment on individual IT workers by including a comparison of fit at two different points in time. Results indicate that for a change in job environment, individuals whose professional needs match what is supplied by the job fare better in terms of strain and performance. By devoting attention to supplying IT workers who are facing increasing amounts of change with job environment dimensions these workers need, managers are able to direct their efforts toward the job environment dimensions that may improve worker performance and reduce the ill-effects of stress and strain. This, in turn, may have positive effects on overall system development. This study provides insights for managers regarding the pressures felt by software developers moving to a new development environment, and contributes to the person-job fit literature by incorporating a technological change in job environment.

Managing the Impact of Rapid IT Change

Rapidly changing information technology is increasing the complexity of IT management. Research has suggested that such change causes nine different problem types for IT managers. It also suggested that these problems cause IT managers to use five categories of coping mechanisms to alleviate the problems. The current study used responses from 246 IT professionals to a survey about the problems and coping mechanisms related to rapid IT change. As examples, new integration refers to the incompatibility or need for interfaces between multiple ITs, and Education and training refers to staying informed of new IT as it becomes available and instructing or providing guidance for its use. The study developed and found support for an overarching hypothesis stating that the more extensively organizations experience the problems of rapid IT change, the more extensively they use coping mechanisms to address them. It also found support for ten specific sub-hypotheses about the effect of individual problems and on individual coping mechanisms. For example, organizations appear to address the problem of new integration needs with the increased use of the coping mechanism of Consultant support. They also cope with User resistance via Vendor support, and with Vendor oversell via internal procedures. The findings provide IT managers, vendors, and consultants with alternative perspectives about the problems of rapid IT change and how others address them. Future research should focus on how specific coping mechanisms ameliorate specific problems.

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

Personality traits were examined in relation to job satisfaction and career satisfaction for 1059 information technology (IT) professionals. As hypothesized, eight traits were significantly related to both job and career satisfaction: Assertiveness, Emotional Resilience, Extraversion, Openness, Teamwork Disposition, Customer Service Orientation, Optimism, and Work Drive. Regression analyses indicated that sets of three and four traits accounted for 17 and 25%, respectively, of job and career satisfaction variance. As expected, career satisfaction correlations were of generally higher magnitude than corresponding job satisfaction correlations. Results were interpreted in terms of IT research and theorizing. The findings that Extraversion and Teamwork Disposition were related to job and career satisfaction contravenes job descriptions and career planning advice, suggesting that independent introverts are better suited for IT work. Given that adult personality is antecedent to work experiences, it was suggested that future research proposing to show the effects of work-related factors such as pay and challenge on job or career satisfaction should first control for personality traits. Other practical and theoretical implications were noted.