Information Technology Workforce Research Articles

From the chair

I am happy to report that the ACM-SIGMIS CPR (Computer Personnel Research) 2007 Conference was a great success! This year's conference was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA from April 19-21, 2007, http://www.sigmis.org/conferences.html. The theme was "The Global Information Technology Workforce." Please check the ACM Digital Library at: http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm to find the SIGMIS CPR 2007 Conference Proceedings. Thanks to the members of the 2007 CPR Conference Committee for all their efforts in making this conference a success: Conference Co-Chairs: Fred Niederman, St. Louis University Mary Sumner, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Program Co-Chairs: Diane Lending, James Madison University Chelley Vician, Michigan Tech University Local Arrangements: Jo Ellen Moore, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Susan Yager, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Treasurer: Donald Amoroso, Appalachian State University Publicity: Anne Powell, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Sandra Newton, University of South Florida Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs: Thomas W. Ferratt, University of Dayton Mike Gallivan, Georgia State University Please join me in congratulating the recipients of the fourth annual "Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper of the Year Award:" Tim Klaus, Stephen Wingreen, and J. Ellis Blanton for their paper, "Examining User Resistance and Management Strategies in Enterprise System Implementations." Warm congratulations to all of you! At the close of the conference, the fifth annual SIGMIS Business Meeting was held. Fred Niederman, St. Louis University, and Mary Sumner, Illinois University Edwardsville, CPR 2007 Conference Co-Chairs, presented a Preliminary Outcome Report for the conference. Donald Amoroso, Appalachian State University, who is the CPR 2008 Conference Chair, provided a Progress Report. Next year's CPR 2008 Conference will be held in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains from April 19--21 in Boone, NC USA. Please visit www.sigmis.org/2008_CPR_Call_for_Papers.pdf for more information I encourage you to submit your research to the CPR 2008 Conference. Everyone is welcome! Please continue to submit your best work to Data Base. As always, we thank you for your continued support of SIGMIS. Please feel free to contact any one of us with suggestions or ideas to improve SIGMIS. Have a great summer!

An experimental investigation of turnover intentions among new entrants in it

Although much research has focused on factors driving the turnover behaviors of information technology (IT) professionals once they are in an employment relationship, little is known about their ex ante intentions to stay when embarking on a new employment relationship. The present study investigates the effects of individual and situational factors on the turnover intentions of new entrants into the IT workforce. Arguably, the IT revolution of the past decade, both at its peak as well as its decline, has changed the expectations and values of this population of workers considerably. Adopting an interactionist perspective, we examine the interaction between individual preferences for organizational risk and variety, and the level of entrepreneurial risk inherent in the business model of a given employer together with the amount of variety that IT work with that employer offers. The posited relationships are tested in a policy capturing experiment with graduating information systems majors as subjects. The results provide support for the interactionist perspective, while at the same time questioning its basic premise.

From the chair

Happy New Year! I hope this year brings you health, happiness, and good cheer!Thanks to those of you who attended the "Sixth Annual ACM-SIGMIS Reception," held as an ACM-SIGMIS event prior to the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2006) in Milwaukee, WI USA. It was great fun seeing everyone. Please visit ACM-SIGMIS's website at: http://www.acm.org/sigmis to view photos from this event. Mark your calendar now for next year's reception, scheduled for Saturday, December 8, 2007, from 5:30-7:00pm, prior to ICIS2007 to be held in Montreal, Canada, December 9-12, 2007.Just a reminder for this year's CPR2007 conference and Doctoral Consortium: Conference: ACM-SIGMIS Computer Personnel Research 2007 Conference Theme: "The Global Information Technology Workforce" When & Where: April 19-21, 2007, St. Louis, Missouri, USA Doctoral Consortium: April 19, 2007 Website: http://www.sigmis.org .The beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, USA is the venue for next year's CPR2008. Please consider sending a submission by the October 2007 deadline. Your participation is welcome!Also, please consider attending the upcoming conferences this year with which we are in-cooperation: Autonomous Infrastructure, Management, and Security (AIMS), http://www.aims2007.org; Business Information Systems (BIS), http://bis.kie.ae.poznan.pl; International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B), http://www.ice-b.org; International Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE), http://www.icete.org; and International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS), http://www.iceis.org.As always, thanks for your support of SIGMIS. We encourage your involvement. Please contact any one of us with suggestions or other input.We look forward to seeing you at ACM-SIGMIS CPR'07!

Intersections of age and masculinities in the information technology industry

This paper explores the intersections of age and masculinities in small information technology (IT) firms in Canada. The IT workforce, although demographically young, does not entirely comprise younger workers but is dominated by men and is ageing. Despite the infamous ‘nerd’ stereotype of IT workers and its associations with immature age and masculinity, perceptions of age and ageing in the industry have not been considered in the context of masculinities. To what extent are conceptualisations of IT work shaped by notions of age and masculinities? How do perceptions of age and masculinities correspond to occupational trajectories and responsibilities in IT work settings? To address these questions, this paper reports an analysis of qualitative semi-structured interviews with 76 employees of small IT firms in Canada. The findings indicate that the dominant frameworks for describing the nature of IT work are metaphors and analogies with sports, the military, entrepreneurial drive and craftsmanship. This paper focuses on the allusions to sport, war and ‘being driven’, and argues that the discursive ties to these masculine arenas normalise, or make ‘natural’, the affiliation of youthfulness and technical ability. The corresponding intersections between age and masculinity suggest that older workers are marginalised in small IT firms.

Young Women’s Misinformation Concerning IT Careers: Exchanging One Negative Image for Another

Introduction Goal of the Research Numerous researchers have indicated that a particular piece of misinformation, the perception of Information Technology (IT) professionals as being geeks and loners, may be one of many explanations for the under-representation of women in Information Technology. In particular, Jepson and Perl (2002) identified a nerdy image of IT people as one of six reasons that girls do not choose IT careers. Hazzan and Levy (2006) identified a geeky and loner image as one of three factors discouraging women from IT careers, positing that women are more likely to be interested in careers involving more interaction with people. Margolis and Fisher (2002) suggested that women are more likely to be affected by the geek stereotype than men are, and thus, when women do not experience an intense obsession with computers, they are more likely to contemplate whether they really belong in the IT field. Eglash (2002) described the geek identity as not only a gender but also a race concern that acts as a gatekeeper and paradox in the participation of science and technology as it potentially hinders diversity. The purpose of this research was to determine if girls in the United States, ages sixteen through eighteen, at the age when they are making university and career choices, do indeed view IT professionals in this negative way. Significance of the Issue The geek/loner issue is important for multiple reasons. The predicted growth of IT jobs in the United States (Hecker, 2005), the shortage of IT professionals (McGee, 2005), and the under-representation of women in the IT field have raised serious concern regarding the US technology workforce in the 21st century (Camp, 1997; Grant, Knight, & Steinbach, 2006; Holzer, 2006; Lazowska, 2002; Sanders, 2005). According to the employment outlook for 2004-2014 by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (Hecker, 2005), and mathematical science occupations are projected to increase 30.7 percent, an additional 967,000 jobs. Of the 30 fastest-growing occupations during this time, six are in computer-related disciplines: network systems and communications analysts, application software engineers, systems software engineers, network and systems administrators, database administrators, and systems analysts. A 2005 study by the Society for Information Management (cited in McGee, 2005) lists critical shortages in IT project management and business domain experts for 2005-2008. McGee (2005) cites two reasons for the shortage of IT professionals. A 10 percent decline from 10 or 15 years ago in the number of students majoring in technology-related degrees has been estimated. Some universities report upwards of a 50 percent decrease in enrollment in these degrees. As baby-boomer professionals begin retiring, an expertise shortage will exacerbate the situation. There has been an 18.5 percent decline in the percentage of women in the IT workforce since 1996 (Information Technology Association of America, 2005). Women composed 32.4 percent of the total IT workforce in 2004. A third of these women are in administrative occupations such as data entry keyer and computer operator. If these administrative occupations are removed from the calculations, women IT professionals and managers fall to 24.9 percent, virtually the same percentage as in 2002. Over the past two decades, the number of young women in the US pursuing careers in Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) has significantly decreased. The National Center of Educational Statistics (2005) reported that in 1984, 32,439 undergraduate students received bachelor's degrees in CIS. Men represented 20,416 of the total (63 percent), while women were 12,023 (37 percent). However, in 2004, 59,488 students received their bachelor's degrees in CIS of which 44,585 (75 percent) were men and 14,903 (25 percent) were women. Thus, the percentage of CIS majors who are female has dropped from 37 percent in 1984 to just 25 percent in 2004. …

Barriers facing women in the IT work force

The percentage of women working in Information Technology (IT) is falling as revealed by the 2003 Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) Blue Ribbon Panel on Information Technology (IT) Diversity report; the percentage of women in the IT workforce fell to 34.9% in 2002 down from 41% in 1996. Several studies have indicated this issue is reaching a crisis level and needs to be explored. Women working in IT at a Fortune 500 company were asked what workplace barriers they faced that had influenced their voluntary turnover decisions or the decisions of their female counterparts. Revealed causal mapping was used to evoke representations of the cognitions surrounding the barriers women face in the IT field. A causal map was developed that indicated women's actual turnover was linked to their views of their family responsibilities, the stresses they face within the workplace, various qualities of their jobs, and the flexibility they were given to determine their work schedule. Their statements regarding the barriers they faced in terms of promotion opportunities (both perceived and actual) were linked to the same four concepts. Interestingly, there was no link between promotion opportunities and voluntary turnover. Reciprocal relationships were identified between managing family responsibility and stress, work schedule flexibility and stress, managing family responsibility and job qualities, and job qualities and stress. Discrimination and lack of consistency in how management treated employees, while important, were not central to how the women in this sample thought about issues related to promotion and voluntary turnover.

Let the sisters speak

In this paper, I examine how and why the situated knowledge and lived experiences of working-class African American women shape their standpoint on information technology (IT). Using the biblical metaphor of the exodus and narratives of ascent, these women view IT access and training as part of a strategy for escaping poverty and despair. Whereas most of the extant gender and IT research provides rich insights into the marginalization of women, the women in this study felt empowered by IT. This contradictory outcome has three implications for the study of gender and IT. First, researchers must consider the multiple identities such as gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and sexuality that shape and are shaped by women's engagement with IT. Second, the notion of IT workforce should take into account not only the highly skilled IT workers who design and build IT artifacts, but should also consider the lower skilled workers who indirectly use IT. Third, IT training programs that serve working-class women must go beyond the transfer of IT skills to individuals. They must also redress the persistent structural barriers of poverty, spatial isolation, illiteracy, sporadic work, and racial and ethnic discrimination that systematically limit women's ability to compete for jobs that provide higher incomes, greater safety, more security, full-time hours, increased benefits, higher status, and less stressful work environments.

From the chair

I am pleased to announce the incoming editors of Data Base: Editor-in-Chief: Tom Stafford, University of Memphis, tstaffor@memphis.edu and Global Co-Editor: Patrick Y.K. Chau, The University of Hong Kong, pchau@business.hku.hk.Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Tom and Patrick. We look forward to their capable leadership and the continued success of Data Base.Our outgoing Co-Editors Wynne Chin, University of Houston, and Dorothy Leidner, Baylor University, will cycle off effective December 31, 2006 after serving a five year term. We wish to thank them again for the excellent job they have done in maintaining the high quality of this quarterly refereed publication.Please plan to attend our "Sixth Annual ACM-SIGMIS Reception," to be held as an ACM-SIGMIS event prior to the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2006) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, December 10-13, 2006. Light refreshments will be served. Where: International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2006) The Hyatt Hotel, Room TBD, Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA When: Saturday, December 9, 2006, 5:30 to 7:00 pm Who: All ACM-SIGMIS members and their invited guests are welcome .As a reminder, the SIGMIS CPR'07 Conference will be held April 19-21, 2007 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The theme of this year's conference is "The Global Information Technology Workforce." Please plan to attend. More information can be found at: http://www.sigmis.org/2007_CPR_Call_for_Papers.pdf.Finally, we invite you to consider hosting a future SIGMIS CPR (Computer Personnel Research) Conference. We are currently accepting Calls For Proposals for the SIGMIS CPR'08 Conference. If you are interested, please email me (janice.sipior@villanova.edu) or Conrad Shayo (cshayo@csusb.edu).Thanks for your interest in SIGMIS. We hope to see you at ICIS'06!

Making Sense of the Barriers Women Face in the Information Technology Work Force: Standpoint Theory, Self-disclosure, and Causal Maps

Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., standpoint theory and the communication boundary management theory) were used to investigate the comments that 39 female information technology (IT) employees made during focus groups as they discussed issues related to workplace barriers and voluntary turnover. The revealed causal mapping method was used to analyze the women’s responses. Voluntary turnover decisions were influenced by work schedule flexibility, family responsibilities, work stress, job qualities, and lack of consistency in workplace policies. Perceived barriers to promotion were linked to lack of respect, ageism, stress, and work schedule flexibility. Differences emerged between explicitly stated and implicitly embedded responses. Women explicitly discussed issues consistent with previous IT research; however their implicit statements often addressed barriers not commonly linked with IT advancement and turnover concerns.

Evaluating causes and consequences of turnover intention among IT workers: the development of a questionnaire survey

In this paper we describe the process of developing a questionnaire survey that evaluates the causes and consequences of turnover intention among information technology (IT) workers, with specific attention to issues of importance to women and minorities within the IT workforce. The questionnaire development process consisted of four steps: 1. Creation of the initial questionnaire from a literature review of existing scales 2. Pilot study using interviews to test the questionnaire 3. Modifications to the questionnaire based on feedback from the pilot study 4. Implementation of the revised questionnaire survey. The process used for the development of the questionnaire survey is systematic and addresses issues specific to the IT workforce, in particular the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the IT workforce. The questionnaire survey allows the collection of reliable and valid data on causes and effects of retention and intention to turnover, thus making it possible to better understand the reasons for the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the IT workforce.

What's the matter with the information technology workforce?

Information technology and the information technology workforce are essential to Internet innovation, infrastructure, development, and maintenance. A comprehensive and dynamic definition of information technology will help develop and coordinate interventions to ensure that a viable, diverse, and talented workforce is available to support information technology innovation, development, implementation, maintenance and application. A viable, diverse, and talented workforce is essential if the United States is to remain competitive in the economy. It is therefore necessary to establish consensus among information technology stakeholders on a definition of information technology prior to proceeding with classification of the workforce and development of educational programs. Wiki and ontology (Topic Maps) are two recent information technology innovations that provide the technological infrastructure necessary to achieve these goals.

Gender and IT Professionals in the United States: A Survey of College Graduates

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present findings from a survey of college graduates working in professional information technology jobs in the United States, focusing specifically on how career outcomes vary by gender. In doing so, we adopt an institutional standpoint and theorise that the organisation of the workplace, postgraduate training and education, and family characteristics largely shape the work-related outcomes of men and women in the information technology workforce. Drawing from interviews with 2823 graduates with information technology-related degrees, we report five major findings. First, women are nearly 2.5 times as likely as men to leave the professional information technology workforce. Second, men and women work similar hours and have similar commute times. Third, no significant differences exist between men's and women's types of formal postgraduate training and education. Fourth, women take more unpaid leave and for longer periods than men. Finally, women are paid significantly less than men. We conclude that the ‘pipeline’ approach to redress the under-representation of women in information technology fields provides a limited solution to a complex situation because it fails to anticipate the significance of women's experiences once they enter professional information technology jobs.

Contested Terrain: Accreditation and the Future of the Profession of Librarianship

This article explores the future trajectory of librarianship and its status as a profession in the context of the contested terrain of the information professions and particularly the development of a differentiated information technology workforce. Andrew Abbott’s theory of the system of professions informs the historical comparison and future forecasting of the relative power of librarianship and the emerging information technology professions to persist into the twenty‐first century. How might value differences manifest themselves in the development of a legitimatizing process for information technology education? What effect might these have on the future development of information technology degree programs offered within schools of information studies? Is it likely that the stability that ALA has enjoyed as a mediator between librarianship and the discipline of information studies will be challenged? Finally, what are the likely consequences for the status of the profession of librarianship?

Leaving Careers in IT: Gender Differences in Retention

The low prevalence of women in the information technology (IT) workforce has received considerable attention in recent years. The focus of much of this discussion concerns how women can be recruited into careers in IT by making careers more attractive and accessible to women. The size of the IT workforce depends on retention as well as recruitment. The focus of this study is on retention, examining factors related to retention and how retention varies by gender. Data for the study come from the Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT) compiled by Science Resources Statistics (SRS), National Science Foundation (NSF). We find that retention varies by gender and that a sizeable proportion of IT-trained women who are not working in IT jobs leave the labor force rather than take positions in other occupations. We also find that marriage and family play different roles for women and men in affecting retention.

Early determinants of women in the IT workforce: a model of girls' career choices

PurposeTo develop a testable model for girls' career choices in technology fields based on past research and hypotheses about the future of the information technology (IT) workforce.Design/methodology/approachReview and assimilation of literature from education, psychology, sociology, computer science, IT, and business in a model that identifies factors that can potentially influence a girl's choice towards or against IT careers. The factors are categorized into social factors (family, peers, and media), structural factors (computer use, teacher/counselor influence, same sex versus coeducational schools), and individual differences. The impact of culture on these various factors is also explored.FindingsThe model indicates that parents, particularly fathers, are the key influencers of girls' choice of IT careers. Teachers and counselors provide little or no career direction. Hypotheses propose that early access to computers may reduce intimidation with technology and that same‐sex education may serve to reduce career bias against IT.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the model is multidisciplinary, much of research from which it draws is five to eight years old. Patterns of career choices, availability of technology, increased independence of women and girls, offshore/nearshore outsourcings of IT jobs are just some of the factors that may be insufficiently addressed in this study.Practical implicationsA “Recommendations” section provides some practical steps to increase the involvement of girls in IT‐related careers and activities at an early age. The article identifies cultural research as a limitation and ways to address this.Originality/valueThe paper is an assimilation of literature from diverse fields and provides a testable model for research on gender and IT.

Factors Affecting State Government Information Technology Employee Turnover Intentions

Electronic government expansion is creating the complex challenges of managing an effective information technology (IT) workforce in the public sector. Survey questionnaires were sent to IT employees working in the central IT departments of two state governments to analyze how job characteristics, work environment, and human resource management practices influence their turnover intentions. Results show that work exhaustion, an emphasis on participatory management, and opportunities for advancement were statistically significant variables affecting state government IT employee turnover intentions, and that salary satisfaction was not a statistically significant factor. Suggestions are offered for improving IT employee retention rates in government agencies.

The Dark Side Of Information Technology For Unions

Although information technology (IT) is widely seen as beneficial to unions, it has a dark side that is seldom recognized—the three serious challenges that IT (primarily the Internet and the Web), pose for unions. First, persons in the emerging IT workforce will often be physically and psychologically distanced from their workplaces and employers, and this may reduce their chances of being successfully organized for collective bargaining. Second, employers may use IT to develop intranets (their own internal Internets), and in this process of voice substitution, they may take over the traditional voice role of unions. Finally, as unions react to employers’ intranets by further building their own Web pages, they may change their relationship with their members. Far from empowering unions, IT may create serious and possibly unsolvable problems.

Gender Divide in the Use of Internet Applications

There is mounting evidence of an increasing gender gap in computer education, which translates into a similar gap in the information technology workforce in the United States. This study investigates whether gender difference in computer usage is carried over to Internet usage. This paper focuses on exploring gender differences in the use of the Internet and the types of application people pursue online. The study will examine if there are fewer females using the Internet than males and will explore how gender difference plays a role in using the Internet for information search, interpersonal communication, entertainment, education, shopping, and personal finance. In addition, we investigate the male-female difference in Internet use by race, age, and educational level. Data used in this study are based on the September 2001 U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, a survey of approximately 50,000 households and more than 157,000 individuals across the United States. The analysis of data shows reverse trends regarding gender in the use of the Internet; furthermore, more females show Internet usage than males for e-mail or instant messaging, for taking an online course, for searching information about products and services, for purchasing products or services, for searching for health services or practices, for getting information about government, and for searching for jobs. However, more males use the Internet than females to play games; for chat rooms or listserv; to get news, weather, or sports; for viewing television, movies, or radio; for telephone calls; to trade stocks, bonds, and mutual funds; and for online banking. The implications of these results are also discussed.

The Persistence of Traditional Gender Roles in the Information Technology Sector: A Study of Female Engineers in India

As women in India enter the rapidly expanding Information Technology (IT) workforce, it could be predicted that their active participation in this sector will change their socio-economic status within the employing organization and the communities in which they reside. It is often expected that women's participation in the professional realm will contribute to a breakdown of traditional gender roles. And indeed, the data illustrate that women are working in the IT sector in India in increasing numbers. However, data collected in 1992 and again in 2002 by the Indian Institute of Technology suggest that not only does women's participation fail to occur at the same speed as IT expansion, but that their participation is based on a continuation of traditional gender roles, which places women on the periphery of an employing organization. Questioning the paradigm of technological determinism, this paper examines how technology and its development can adapt to the existing social structure. The persistence of such gender divides perpetuate the notion of gender segregation and do not enhance women's socio-economic and political status, nor provide equal participation in the information economy.

The Relation between Job Characteristics and Quality of Working Life: The Role of Task Identity to Explain Gender and Job Type Differences

Women are largely underrepresented in the Information Technology (IT) workforce. Our study examines the factors related to the work environment that may contribute to the high turnover of women in the IT workforce. The literature links Quality of Working Life (QWL) to turnover intention, and turnover intention to turnover. In this study, we conducted secondary data analysis of questionnaire data collected from a sample of 1,110 employees of a single organization. We examined the impact of gender and job type (i.e. IT job versus non-IT job) on various indicators of QWL, as well as on the relationship between job factors and QWL. The results show that, specifically for women in IT jobs, task identity is highly associated with QWL.