How to Avoid Empty Chairs in IT Divisions? IS Supported Succession Management to Control Development and Retention of IT Professionals

The IT profession possesses two main characteristics: an imbalance between demanded and available IT professionals, and a fast technological change, which constantly requires new IT competences. Hence, medium and large organizations that heavily rely on IT need methods to retain and develop the employees of their IT divisions in order to avoid vacancies. However, prior scientific research only examines this problem from an individual perspective, but it remains unknown how organizations can control the development and retention of IT professionals. In this paper, we reveal how IS supported succession management can help to control the development and retention of IT professionals. Therefore, we employ an exploratory interview study among 21 organizations. Our results indicate that succession management can be used to control the development and retention of IT professionals. Moreover, an IS support of succession management allows to extend the target group of IT professionals while costs are hold down

A communicative-tension model of change-induced collective voluntary turnover in IT

Losing talented IT employees, the most critical strategic resource in IT, during a major organizational change can be catastrophic to the overall performance of the IS organization. This paper develops a multi-layered communicative-tension model of change-induced collective voluntary turnover from a historical case study analysis. A major organizational change at a healthcare insurance firm’s IT unit reveals the presence of three primary communicative tensions: alignment-autonomy, stability-change and expression-suppression. A group of employees, dissatisfied with the negative communicative practices employed by their managers in the midst of these communicative tensions, left the organization. A communicative-tension model of change-induced collective voluntary turnover complements and extends upon prior collective voluntary turnover research by accounting for the organizational change context and broader relational dynamics. This study offers practitioners important insights on how to manage communicative tensions during an IS organizational change to improve IT talent retention.http//: www.elsevier.com/locate/jsis2017-12-31hb2017Informatic

Perceptions of Factors that Contribute to Employee Retention of IT Project Managers

The low retention rate of information technology (IT) project managers from a region in the southeastern United States has increased an organization\u27s operational costs and decreased the organization\u27s global competitiveness. The conceptual foundation for this study was the resource-based theory of competitive advantage. This multiple case study explored IT project managers\u27 perceptions of the factors that contributed to their retention. Participants in the study included 10 IT project managers with at least 5 years of experience who were also members of a chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI). Semistructured interviews were conducted via teleconference to collect data that were subjected to a thematic analysis. Three key themes emerged from the analysis: an understanding of project management, challenging work, and certification support. The results of the study might provide those individuals in charge of hiring IT project managers with criteria that define what these IT project managers require as well what benefits can be offered and what methods can be applied in retaining these IT Project Managers. Findings from the study have implications for positive social change by contributing to the project management body of knowledge, positioning companies competitively, and effectively engaging IT project managers