Information Systems Employees Research Articles

Determinants of Turnover Intentions: Comparing IC and IS Personnel

Personnel is one of the most important resources for the performance of Information Systems (IS) and Information Center (IC) organizations. The scarcity of new employees, the difficulty of training and a high turnover make personnel management in these areas a difficult problem. For IS employees, the relationships between job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to leave the organization have been established. Because the size of the investment and the number of organizations establishing IC organizations are growing dramatically, it has become important to understand the determinants of turnover intentions for IC as well as IS employees. Are IC employees similar to their IS counterparts? Or, is their nature basically different, as some studies have suggested? This study examines the differences between IS and IC employees in terms of demographic characteristics, participation on boundary spanning activities, role stressors, overall job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. The differences are found to be significant and call for special attention from IC managers to manage more properly their personnel resources. IC employees were found to participate more extensively in boundary spanning activities, experienced more role stressors (role ambiguity and role conflict), were less satisfied with their jobs and less committed to their organization. The findings also demonstrate the importance of organizational commitment as an intervening variable in models of turnover. While overall job satisfaction had both direct and indirect effects on turnover intentions among IC employees, for IS personnel it had only indirect effects through organizational commitment. The effects of role stressors and boundary spanning activities were found to be indirect via overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment for both IC and IS employees. The implications of these findings for practicing managers and for future research are discussed.

Career Anchors of Information Systems Personnel

:Career research in the information systems (IS) field has primarily focused on external motivators associated with organizational factors and material incentives. IS empirical research investigating the internalized career orientations of practitioners is necessary to match individual expectations with corporate human resource planning.This study identifies several career anchors or orientations maintained by IS personnel. By administering the Career Orientations Inventory to 321 IS personnel, Managerial and Technical Competence, Identity, Service, Organizational Stability, and Variety career orientations are distinguished. These internal anchors significantly influence how IS and human resource management should (1) plan corporate IS career paths, (2) nurture IS employees during their careers, and (3) encourage appropriate communication about career advancement.

Job performance of MIS professionals: An examination of the antecedents and consequences

Abstract This study examines the antecedents and consequences of job performance among management information systems (MIS) employees. The results obtained show that job performance is affected by perceived job characteristics and that job performance displays a number of positive effects on career advancement prospects, career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to stay. They also indicate that role stressors display a number of negative effects on job satisfaction, career satisfaction, career advancement prospects, organizational commitment, and intention to stay. Furthermore, job satisfaction and career satisfaction are found to have direct effects on organizational commitment, and organizational commitment and job satisfaction have direct effects on intention to stay. Finally, these results are related to prior research, suggestions for future research are offered and implications for management of MIS employees are identified.

Medical information system training: An analysis of the reactions of hospital employees

Six months after the implementation of a medical information system (MIS) employees were questioned concerning their evaluation of the training they received. Wide variability is observed in the range of employee responses to questions addressing their: satisfaction with the training experience, desire for any additional training, ease of learning to use the system, and level of felt competence in currently using the system. The results of stepwise regression analyses of the response patterns indicate that personality traits, attitudes toward automation, and work history variables are key factors in explaining why employees have different reactions to training.