The influence of ethnicity on organizational commitment and merit pay of IT workers: the role of leader support

Abstract

Projections of looming shortages in the supply of skilled IT workers, along with high employee replacement costs, make employee attraction, retention and support a pressing concern for organizations. One potential remedy for these shortages is to focus more attention on historically underrepresented groups. We explore ways organizations can support ethnic minority IT professionals to enhance their career success. Integrating affective, cognitive and social perspectives through affective events theory and social exchange theory, our objective is to explore the implications of ethnic minority status for the relationship between leader support (i.e., mentoring and leader-member exchange (LMX)) and subjective and objective indicators of career success (i.e., organizational commitment and merit pay) among IT workers. To test the model, we conducted a field study of 289 IT workers in a Fortune 500 company. Our results showed that LMX influenced organizational commitment for ethnic minorities, while career mentoring and LMX influenced organizational commitment for majorities. Psychosocial mentoring influenced merit pay for ethnic minorities, while neither LMX nor mentoring influenced merit pay for majorities. Our study contributes to the literature on IT personnel issues by exploring how and why these leader support mechanisms enhance organizational commitment and merit pay for IT workers. Moreover, we demonstrate that ethnicity is an important consideration for researchers studying organizational commitment, merit pay, mentoring and LMX. Our findings suggest that managers can boost organizational commitment among IT workers by focusing on LMX and career mentoring. Moreover, they may want to place particular emphasis on psychosocial mentoring and interventions to enhance LMX for their ethnic minority IT workers.

Mobile health technology adoption across generations: Narrowing the digital divide

“…First, while acknowledging existing organizational privacy research (eg, Greenaway, Chan, & Crossler, ), we call for privacy researchers to explore organizational efforts to address the privacy concerns of specific groups such as older adults. Second, despite strong progress in social inclusion research, many challenges remain in narrowing the digital divide in technology‐related opportunities and supports (Windeler & Riemenschneider, ). Thus, we extend recent calls for social inclusion IS research (Trauth, ) and call for privacy researchers and IS researchers in a broader sense to consider the intersectionality between crucial issues such as privacy and technology adoption, and important individual variables popularized in the social inclusion literature such as age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.…”

“…However, the realization of such benefits is predicated on adoption, which remains low among older citizens (Bidmon, Terlutter, & Röttl, ; PEW, ), pointing to the existence of an age‐based digital divide in m‐health adoption. The digital divide has been studied from a number of perspectives in the Information Systems (IS) discipline, particularly within the social inclusion literature (eg, Kvansy & Trauth, ; Windeler & Riemenschneider, ), which has focused on understanding the differences in access to technology and the technology‐related opportunities afforded to individuals based on demographic characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. This important body of work has highlighted discrepancies in access to technology as well as imbalances in how technology is supported among minority groups (Windeler & Riemenschneider, ).…”

“…The digital divide has been studied from a number of perspectives in the Information Systems (IS) discipline, particularly within the social inclusion literature (eg, Kvansy & Trauth, ; Windeler & Riemenschneider, ), which has focused on understanding the differences in access to technology and the technology‐related opportunities afforded to individuals based on demographic characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. This important body of work has highlighted discrepancies in access to technology as well as imbalances in how technology is supported among minority groups (Windeler & Riemenschneider, ). In the health context, a recent study explored the influence of ethnicity, education, and income on diabetics' motivation and ability to search online for health information (Morgan, ).…”

The advancement and persistence of women in the information technology profession: An extension of Ahuja's gendered theory of IT career stages

“…For example, in their study of men and women business school graduates, Dougherty, Dreher, Arunachalam, and Wilbanks () found that protégés with non–senior‐level mentors received less compensation than those with no mentors, with this negative effect being especially strong for women. Within the IT literature, it has been found that ethnic minorities benefited more from psychosocial mentoring than ethnic majorities (eg, Windeler & Riemenschneider, ). Future research might explore the role of mentoring and role models with women (and men) from various ethnic groups.…”

Editorial 26:2

“…A model resulting from the research explains the process through which competing frames become aligned. Windeler & Riemenschneider (2016) investigate potential barriers in the IT profession to members of historically underrepresented groups through a field study of 289 IT workers in a Fortune 500 company. Employing affective events and social exchange theories, they explored the implications of ethnic minority status on the relationship between leader support and indicators of career success among IT workers.…”