IT occupational culture: the cultural fit and commitment of new information technologists

Abstract

PurposeAs the shortage in the information technology (IT) workforce continues, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the cultural dimensions of IT occupations that attract or drive away potential IT professionals. In the present study, the authors take an occupational culture approach to study the cultural fit of newcomers to IT occupations and to understand how young people perceive the culture embedded in this occupational community as they become part of it.Design/methodology/approachThe authors take a sequential mixed methodology approach composed of two phases, one qualitative and the other quantitative. In the first phase of the study, nine focus groups and 27 interviews with college students were conducted to learn about the challenges and barriers that they personally experienced while becoming part of the IT occupational community. The second phase used results from the first qualitative phase to design a survey instrument that was administered to 215 IT college students who were currently or had recently been involved in IT work experience to evaluate their cultural fit to the IT occupational culture (ITOC) and its influence on their occupational commitment.FindingsThe results suggest that women, ethnic minorities and those with less work experience encountered greater difficulty fitting into different dimensions of ITOC. The results also showed that cultural fit is a good predictor of occupational commitment and affective commitment in particular.Practical implicationsAn initial survey instrument was developed to measure cultural fit to ITOC. This instrument can be further modified and adapted to be used in the hiring process by HR departments to measure cultural fit to organizational subcultures, such as the one in the IT occupational group.Originality/valueThis paper constitutes an important contribution to the rigor and development of the theory and research of human resources in information technologies.

Occupational Sub-Cultures, Jurisdictional Struggle and Third Space: Theorising Professional Service Responses to Research Data Management

“…Professional bodies have sought to credentialise skills in IT, but the speed of change in IT has prevented them achieving occupational closure (Danner, 1998). One strand of studies of IT has applied Trice's (1993) theoretical framework to IT professionals (Guzman and Stanton, 2009;Guzman et al, 2008;Ramachandran and Rao, 2006). These studies have found that IT professionals have a distinctive occupational sub-culture.…”

Cultural richness versus cultural large scale insights

“…From an organizational perspective, Schein [5] argued strongly that cultural studies must use qualitative methods in order to tap and understand deep structure issues. Unfortunately, within the IS discipline, Leidner and Kayworth [9] found that there is a predominance of survey designs and positivist case studies in IS culture research, with very few ethnographies or other interpretive designs.…”

Managerial Tolerance of Insider Information Sabotage Acts and How Different Organizational Cultures Might Influence such Tolerance

“…One of the social and leadership factors often mentioned as a contributor to information sabotage behavior is the culture/environment (Appelbaum, Iaconi, & Matousek, 2006;Appelbaum, Shapiro, & Molson, 2007;Guzman & Stanton, 2009;Hunker & Probst, 2011;Leidner & Kayworth, 2006;Warkentin & Willison, 2009). Research on the context of the possible different organization cultures that enable information sabotage acts to occur has been relatively neglected except for the above mentioned data leakage and hacking literature (Guzman & Stanton, 2009;Leidner & Kayworth, 2006).…”

“…Research on the context of the possible different organization cultures that enable information sabotage acts to occur has been relatively neglected except for the above mentioned data leakage and hacking literature (Guzman & Stanton, 2009;Leidner & Kayworth, 2006). Organizational culture research may also lend answers to a fundamental question as to why managers could be tolerant or intolerant of such acts (Huth et al, 2013;Richards, 2008;Warkentin & Willison, 2009).…”