TURNOVER AND TURNAWAY OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS/TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS DURING A NATIONAL CRISIS AND ACROSS AGE GROUPS

We study how the perceptions of job insecurity (JI), job satisfaction (JS) and professional self-efficacy (PSE) of information systems/technology (IST) professionals influence their intentions to leave their organizations... [ view full abstract ]

We study how the perceptions of job insecurity (JI), job satisfaction (JS) and professional self-efficacy (PSE) of information systems/technology (IST) professionals influence their intentions to leave their organizations (ILO) or to leave the IST profession (ILP) during a multi-order national crisis. We also examine if the professionals’ age has any influence over those perceptions and intentions. We analyzed survey data from 291 IST professionals of all ages in several organizations from different economic segments of the private and public sectors in Brazil. Data collection occurred in two distinctive moments of the largest crisis in recent Brazilian history – a pre-awareness period, and a crisis-conscious period. The main empirical findings are that PSE negatively influences JI and positively influences JS, JI positively influences ILP, JS negatively influences both ILO and ILP, age negatively influences ILO and positively influences ILP, and the intensity of a national crisis positively influences ILP. Our study contributes by suggesting a parsimonious network of constructs to study ILO and ILP among IST professionals, by providing clues on how the cognitive-affective job-related archetype of IST professionals reacts to background crises and according to an individual’s age, and by going upstream to warn that being a highly demanded IST professional is not an unlimited guarantee for one’s job satisfaction and security.