Retention and the career motives of IT professionals

Abstract

Motivated by organizational concerns related to the recruitment and retention of IT professionals, the objective of this paper is to develop and investigate an explanatory model of IT professionals' joining and staying/leaving behaviors. The underlying conceptual base for the model draws upon recent work on psychological contracts. A key dimension in this work is the preferred duration of the employment relationship. We elaborate the theory of psychological contracts with additional constructs representing an IT professional's career motives. In particular, our version of the theory suggests that, in addition to preferred length of the employment relationship, important individual factors that help form the psychological contract are the career stage of an individual and the individual's personal career anchor or orientation. Specific hypotheses related to the effects of these variables on staying/leaving behavior are presented. Empirical data gathered from a field study of 130 IT professionals were used to test the research hypotheses. Results indicate that the hypothesized variables exhibit significant effects on IT professionals' intentions to stay with their current employer. In addition, results point to directions where fruitful future research is warranted.

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