Mitigating Turnover Intentions: Are All IT Workers Warriors?

Abstract

The current study is a conceptual replication of Ahuja, Chudoba, Kacmar, McKnight, and George's (2007) model of the proximal and distal antecedents of the turnover intentions of information technology (IT) professionals. Whereas the original study focused on 'IT Road Warriors', those that spend most of their work life away from home; we applied the original study's hypotheses and model to the more general context of IT professionals. Results from a sample of 301 IT professionals housed in an on-site internal IT department were mixed. Consistent with Ahuja et al. (2007), the relationships between exhaustion, organizational commitment, and turnover intention were supported. Also, the influence of work-family conflict on exhaustion, but not organizational commitment, was confirmed. In contrast to Ahuja et al. (2007), the replication study found that fairness of rewards was much more important to in-house IT professionals than autonomy. Future research should investigate the boundaries of Ahuja et al.'s (2007) model of turnover intention for various sub-populations within the IT profession, such as system administrators, contract workers, and perhaps CIOs. Researchers may also want to explore factors outside the current model that may impact the turnover intention of IT professionals such as organizational and professional identity and boundary spanning.

Work engagement and task performance within a global Dutch ICT-consulting firm: The mediating role of innovative work behaviors

“…This increased level of skills mobility has caused a talent crisis within the ICT sector (Diedericks and Rothmann 2014). In fact, research suggests that staff turnover within the ICT sector ranges between 25% and 35% on an annual basis (Armstrong et al 2018;Maleh et al 2019;Naidoo 2016;Naqvi and Bashir 2015).…”

“…Dutch ICT organizations have therefore become aware that the long-term retention of talented IT professionals is improbable (Armstrong et al 2018). Resultantly, organizations' focus are shifting away from implementing long-term talent retention programs and started to adopt short-to medium term strategies to maximize the performance returns-and innovative capacities of its current talent pool (Lloyd and Payne 2016).…”

“…Driving 'objective' performance metrics (such as billable hours, chasing targets etc.) is therefore not sustainable and will eventually lead decreased performance, higher staff turnover and a tarnished employer brand (Armstrong et al 2018;Maleh et al 2019;Naidoo 2016;Naqvi and Bashir 2015). So, if the focus should not be on driving outputs (i.e.…”

The drivers and effects of burnout within an information technology work context: a job demands-resources framework

“…Since that time, IS researchers have primarily used work exhaustion as a proxy for burnout and have confirmed the link between work exhaustion and turnover intention (e.g. Ahuja et al. , 2007; Armstrong et al.…”

Counterpoint

“…To date, the reflective measurement model is the dominant way of modeling theoretical concepts, and widely acknowledged in the IS literature. For instance, theoretical concepts such as Ease of Use (Brown & Venkatesh, 2005;Gefen et al, 2003;Karimi et al, 2004;Lewis et al, 2003;Van der Heijden, 2004;Wixom & Todd, 2005), Turnover Intention (Ahuja et al, 2007;Allen et al, 2009;Armstrong et al, 2018;Joseph et al, 2007;Moquin et al, 2019), and Role Overload (Ho et al, 2003) have been specified as latent variables incorporated in a reflective measurement model.…”