Turnover and Turnaway of IT Workers

Abstract

Especially in view of the increasing skill shortage, the retention of information technology (IT) workers in organizations remains one of the three most important IT management issues for practitioners [11]. Organizations are confronted with two relevant behavioral outcomes on behalf of IT workers in this context: turnover and turnaway. While turnover means that IT workers leave their employer and start working for another employer while staying in the IT profession, turnaway reflects the abandonment of the IT profession [9]. Previous research emerging from the CPR community examines a variety of factors that lead to IT workers' turnover and turnaway, e.g. perceived job alternatives [10, 12], job satisfaction, organizational commitment [13], or personality attributes [5]. These can be classified into three categories on a superior level: individual, job-related, and organization-related factors [10]. Do these factors no longer fit with the IT workers' expectations, the intention to turn over or turn away is developed. The influence of the existing or absent fit on workers' individual outcomes, such as turnover or turnaway, is grounded in person-environment fit theory [6, 8]. In the work-related context, this environment fit consists of five dimensions: --person-vocation fit (the worker's fit with the profession s/he chose),--person-job fit (the worker's fit with the job s/he is currently working in),--person-organization fit (the worker's fit with the organization, where s/he is currently employed),--person-group fit (the worker's fit with the work group or team s/he is working with), and--person-person fit (the worker's fit with her/his supervisor).The person-environment fit theory has already taken up in information systems research examining the development of single fit dimensions out of work-related factors [14, 15].In our research, we focus on the entirety of fit dimensions as included in the person-environment fit theory as well as on their influence of IT workers' turnover and turnaway intention. The analysis will be performed along different demographic characteristics, which have been evidently shown to play a role in previous studies on turnover and turnaway: age [7], gender [9], work experience, and job type [5] (see Figure 1).