Highly engaged, less likely to quit? – A theoretical perspective on work engagement and turnover in agile information systems development projects

Agile information systems development (ISD) has become a popular way to manage IT projects. One of the key claims of agile ISD is to increase employees’ work outcomes. At the same time, organizations increasingly struggle to gain and retain qualified IT professionals. Aim of this research is to understand how agile practices influence employees’ work engagement and, as a result, their turnover intention. In order to gain empirical evidence, we propose a theoretical model based on the conservation of resources theory. Practical and theoretical implications demonstrate what conclusions can be made regarding the influence of agile ISD on resources, work engagement and intention to quit and what companies can do to retain their IT employees in ISD projects

Talent flow analytics in online professional network

Singapore National Research Foundation under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Consequences of Project Team Member Turnover for agile Information Systems Development Teams: A Multiple Case Study

Turnover of IT professionals has been at the center of IT workforce research, mainly focusing on individual level drivers and consequences. This paper explores how turnover events affect the dynamics of agile software development (ISD) teams. We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews in seven cases to understand team-level consequences of turnover events. We found that ISD teams who directly or indirectly experienced turnover events are confronted with the following four consequences on the group level: (1) group dynamics shift, leading to (2) interpersonal voids, and (3) voids of expertise which consequently leads to (4) rebalancing resources. Through our work, we contribute to a better understanding of how coping processes that start after collective turnover occurs in agile ISD teams are shaped at the group level

Is Information Technology Solely to Blame? The Influence of Work-home Conflict Dimensions on Work Exhaustion

Using information technology (IT) can blur the boundaries between work and private life and contribute to an IT-based work-home conflict (WHC). Organizations and governments treat IT usage as the main source of WHC and have implemented laws and policies to restrict access to IT to reduce WHC. In this paper, we investigate the effect of IT usage-related and work-based dimensions of WHC: time-, strain-, and behavior-based WHC. Understanding the dimensions of WHC can help organizations and governments move beyond IS usage restrictions to identify and prevent the negative consequences of each dimension for employees, such as work exhaustion. We distinguish IT- from work-based dimensions and theorize their effect on work exhaustion. The results of a study of 542 employees show that the IT-based dimension of WHC only indirectly influences work exhaustion, whereas time- and strain-based WHC contribute significantly and directly to work exhaustion. Implications for research and practice are suggested

Talent Flow Analytics in Online Professional Network

Analyzing job hopping behavior is important for understanding job preference and career progression of working individuals. When analyzed at the workforce population level, job hop analysis helps to gain insights of talent flow among different jobs and organizations. Traditionally, surveys are conducted on job seekers and employers to study job hop behavior. Beyond surveys, job hop behavior can also be studied in a highly scalable and timely manner using a data driven approach in response to fast-changing job landscape. Fortunately, the advent of online professional networks (OPNs) has made it possible to perform a large-scale analysis of talent flow. In this paper, we present a new data analytics framework to analyze the talent flow patterns of close to 1 million working professionals from three different countries/regions using their publicly-accessible profiles in an established OPN. As OPN data are originally generated for professional networking applications, our proposed framework re-purposes the same data for a different analytics task. Prior to performing job hop analysis, we devise a job title normalization procedure to mitigate the amount of noise in the OPN data. We then devise several metrics to measure the amount of work experience required to take up a job, to determine that existence duration of the job (also known as the job age), and the correlation between the above metric and propensity of hopping. We also study how job hop behavior is related to job promotion/demotion. Lastly, we perform connectivity analysis at job and organization levels to derive insights on talent flow as well as job and organizational competitiveness.Comment: arXiv admin note: extension of arXiv:1711.05887, Data Science and Engineering, 201

Who really quits? A longitudinal analysis of voluntary turnover among IT personnel

In response to high turnover rates among IT personnel compared to other groups of professionals, IS research has focused on factors contributing to IT personnel's turnover intention; however, only few studies have focused on actual turnover. To shed more light on actual turnover behavior, this longitudinal study of 125 IT personnel theorizes and analyzes the influence of job-related beliefs on turnover intention and behavior over time. Our results confirm a previously documented turnover intention-behavior gap, finding that 91 out of 125 survey participants indicate a high turnover intention, but that only 27 reported actual turnover behavior within the following 12 months. We further theorize this turnover intention-behavior gap by identifying IT personnel's personality as an important moderating variable for this relation. Specifically, IT personnel more disposed to resisting change translate turnover intentions into actual turnover behavior more seldom than IT personnel less disposed to resisting change. Our study also focuses on how personality influences changes in IT personnel's job-related beliefs and whether or not actual turnover behavior has a positive influence on these beliefs. Our results show that more change-resistant IT personnel change their degrees of job satisfaction and organizational commitment more seldom than less change-resistant personnel and that IT personnel who quit their job change their degree of job satisfaction and organizational commitment more frequently. Our results also show that intentions are a more suitable predictor for less change-resistant individuals than for change-resistant ones

Technostress: Theoretical foundation and empirical evidence

In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurden die Vorteile des Einsatzes von Informationstechnologien (IT) durch die Forschung im Bereich der Wirtschaftsinformatik umfassend dargelegt. Unter anderem konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Nutzung von IT in Unternehmen mit einer Produktivitätssteigerung der Mitarbeiter einhergeht (Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996) sowie das Verwalten und Bereitstellen von unstrukturierten Informationen effektiver und effizienter gestaltet (Laumer et al. 2013). Gleichermaßen wird IT auch für private Zwecke eingesetzt. Unter anderem werden Smartphones und soziale Netzwerkplattformen verwendet, um mit Freunden in Kontakt zu bleiben oder sich zu verabreden (Khan und Jarvenpaa 2010). Ungeachtet dieser Vorteile existieren erste Indizien, wonach IT für Endnutzer nicht uneingeschränkt positiv ist. Beispielsweise konnte Technostress als ein potentielles Problem der allgegenwärtigen IT-Nutzung für Endnutzer identifiziert werden (Ayyagari et al. 2011). Dies bedeutet, dass sich Personen von der IT-Nutzung gestresst fühlen (Ragu-Nathan et al. 2008). Eine Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Thema ist insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund, dass die IT-Nutzung in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung als einer der Hauptgründe von Burnout dargestellt wird, von großer Relevanz. Aufgrund dieser Relevant ist Technostress Gegenstand dieser Dissertation und die Forschungsfrage lautet: Was sind Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Technostress? Für die Beantwortung dieser Forschungsfrage ist die Dissertation in fünf Kapitel gegliedert. Kapitel 1 analysiert Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Stress bei der Nutzung von IT für Arbeitszwecke. Anschließend untersucht Kapitel 2, welche Ursachen bei der Nutzung von IT im Privaten Technostress auslösen und welche Konsequenzen dies für den Nutzer hat. Kapitel 3 und 4 thematisieren den Einfluss von IT-Abhängigkeit und Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen auf Ursachen von und Reaktionen auf Technostress. Abschließend wird in Kapitel 5 eine Methode diskutiert, wie Stressreaktionen objektiv mittels Eyetracking-Technologie und elektrodermaler Aktivität erfasst werden können. Die Ergebnisse der Dissertation zeigen, dass Technostress sowohl bei der IT-Nutzung in Unternehmen als auch im Privaten das Verhalten der Nutzer beeinflusst. Die Identifikation von Stressoren sowie die Reaktionen auf diese Stressoren sind ein zentraler Bestandteil der vorliegenden Dissertation, mit dem Ziel, Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Technostress aufzuzeigen. Im organisationalen Kontext werden Stressoren und Reaktionen sowohl bei der Nutzung von mehreren IT-Systemen, wie in bisherigen Forschungsarbeiten zum Thema Technostress üblich (Ayyagari et al. 2011), als auch für ein konkretes IT-System (SAP E-Recruiting 6.0 Enhancement Package 4) untersucht. Stressoren sind in diesem Kontext vor allem technologiebedingte Arbeitsstressoren und Technologiecharakteristika. Zu den Reaktionen auf diese Stressoren zählen unter anderem eine geringe Jobzufriedenheit und die Absicht, sich einen neuen Arbeitsplatz zu suchen. Im Kontext der privaten IT-Nutzung zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass neben Technologiecharakteristika insbesondere soziale Faktoren Stressreaktionen hervorrufen. Diese Stressursachen lösen eine generelle Unzufriedenheit mit der IT aus und veranlassen Personen dazu, die weiterführende Nutzung der IT kritisch zu überdenken. Darüber hinaus zeigen die Ergebnisse der Dissertation, dass die Nicht-Nutzung eines möglicherweise stressenden IT-Systems nicht zwangsläufig stressfreier ist, da notwendige Veränderungen und die Nutzung von alternativen Technologien ebenfalls Stress hervorrufen. Mit Hinblick auf aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse, welche die Bedeutung von Verhaltensabhängigkeit aufzeigen (Turel et al. 2011; Turel und Serenko 2012), beinhaltet die Dissertation eine Erklärung, weshalb Personen stressende IT-Systeme im privaten Umfeld weiter nutzen. Hier belegen Ergebnisse, dass abhängige Personen Verhaltensintentionen unterschiedlich in Nicht-Nutzungsverhalten umwandeln, als dies nicht-abhängige IT-Nutzer tun. Um zu überprüfen, inwiefern IT-Nutzer mit unterschiedlichen Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen auf Stress reagieren, zeigen Ergebnisse, dass manche Persönlichkeitsmerkmale einen Einfluss auf Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Technostress haben. Abschließend zeigt die Dissertation, inwieweit objektive Methoden, wie die Verwendung der Eyetracking-Technologie und der Elektrodermalen Aktivität, im Rahmen der Technostressforschung eingesetzt werden können, um Verhaltensweisen erklärbar und nachvollziehbar zu machen. Mit den im Rahmen dieser Dissertation erzielten Ergebnissen können entsprechende Erkenntnisgewinne für die Forschung und Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik abgeleitet werden. Die Identifikation von Stressoren bei der IT-Nutzung (Ayyagari et al. 2011) ermöglicht es, Reaktionen auf Stressoren detaillierter zu verstehen (Tarafdar et al. 2010). Insbesondere die Wichtigkeit des IT-Nutzungskontextes als Einflussfaktor auf zu untersuchende Stressfaktoren und Reaktionen ermöglicht das Analysieren von Technostress in verschiedenen Nutzungskontexten. Mit der Identifikation von Stressoren als stärkste Einflussfaktoren auf die individuelle Nutzungsabsicht trägt die vorliegende Dissertation zu verschiedensten Technologieakzeptanzmodellen (z. B. Davis 1989; Venkatesh und Davis 2000) bei, indem es diese um den Faktor Technostress erweitert. Darüber hinaus belegt die Arbeit, dass Stress bei IT-Veränderungen und -Implementierungen insbesondere durch Veränderungsstressoren ausgelöst wird. Dies kann beispielsweise als Antwort auf eine Arbeit von Morris und Venkatesh (2010) verstanden werden, in der die Autoren eine Untersuchung von Stress bei IT-Veränderungen fordern. Ferner zeigt der Einfluss von Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen im Themenbereich Technostress, dass Personen in Abhängigkeit ihrer Prädisposition ein unterschiedliches Stressempfinden verspüren sowie unterschiedlich auf Stressfaktoren reagieren. Abschließend bietet die Dissertation einen weiteren Ansatz zur objektiven Messung von Reaktionen auf Stress, wie dies unter anderem von Riedl et al. (2012) und Ayyagari et al. (2011) gefordert wurde. Hinsichtlich der primären Motivation der Dissertation, Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Technostress zu erklären, kann abschließend festgehalten werden, dass die Stressoren vom jeweiligen Nutzungskontext abhängen und dieser die Reaktion der IT-Nutzer determiniert.The main objective of this dissertation is to provide theoretical explanations and empirical evidence for the causes and consequences of technostress. The results of this dissertation posit that the IT usage context matters. This means that users perceive technostress when using IT for work and for private purposes; but the causes and consequences differ for both contexts. In the case of using IT for work, technological characteristics and techno-stressors cause employees to feel exhausted at the end of their work day, feel dissatisfied with their job, and develop intentions to quit their job. In the case of IT usage for private purposes, social stressors are identified as new sort of stressor influencing psychological and behavioral strain even more strongly than techno-stressors. Although users of a stressful IT become dissatisfied with its usage and develop intentions to stop using it, the dissertation finds that switching to and using one or more alternatives can be even more stressful. In this context, this dissertation also emphasizes the influence of additional variables, such as user personality on technology characteristics, stressors and strain, concluding that the perception of stressors and strain varies among individuals. Bearing these conclusions in mind, IT can be seen as a double-edged sword: using IT can be a source of fun, but potentially also a source of stress to others and to ourselves

Strategies for Reducing Voluntary Employee Turnover in Public Schools

The oversight of systematic approaches to reducing voluntary employee turnover decreases educational institutions’ budgets and performance. In the United States, public schools spend over $2.22 billion annually in voluntary employee turnover costs. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies public school leaders use to reduce voluntary employee turnover. The population consisted of 3 leaders from 1 public school located in Georgia, with successful experience reducing voluntary employee turnover. The conceptual framework for this study was grounded in Vroom’s expectancy theory. The data collection process included semistructured interviews and organizational documents and artifacts. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Three themes emerged from the data collected: building a collaborative and supportive work environment, creating work motivation, and implementing incentives, rewards, and professional development. The implications for positive social change include the potential to reduce the local government’s expenditures associated with the replacement of employees and to increase resources for supporting social initiatives and more effective instruction for students in the community

Resistência à mudança, suporte organizacional, comprometimento organizacional e propriedade psicológica : um estudo multinível

Tese (doutorado) — Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade e Gestão Pública, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração, 2022.A literatura sobre gerenciamento da mudança indica que, embora a resistência à mudança seja uma expressão amplamente citada, ainda há carência de estudos que investiguem fatores que a influenciam. Assim, esta pesquisa teve o objetivo de desenvolver um modelo de resistência à mudança, considerando a influência de percepções de suporte organizacional, comprometimento organizacional e propriedade psicológica, em uma perspectiva multinível, atitudinal e de organizing. Um modelo teórico multinível hipotetizado foi proposto e testado empiricamente no contexto de Instituições Federais de Ensino Superior – IFES, tomando-se as rotinas de tramitação de processos como objeto da mudança e considerando o Sistema Eletrônico de Informações – SEI como seu artefato. Com a adoção da abordagem de métodos mistos, os dados foram coletados em 3 Universidades Federais, por meio de documentos, entrevistas, grupos focais e questionários. Dois estudos quantitativos foram conduzidos por meio de análises estatísticas descritivas e inferenciais, incluindo análises fatoriais exploratórias e modelagem multinível. A etapa qualitativa foi complementar, realizada por meio de análise de conteúdo, tomando-se 26 categorias definidas a priori. Como resultados, a mudança objeto da pesquisa foi caracterizada, confirmando o papel do SEI como artefato indutor de contínuas mudanças nas rotinas e a interdependência e o potencial reflexivo de seus participantes. Do primeiro estudo quantitativo (N = 743), foram expostas evidências de validade das escalas para o contexto empírico da pesquisa: atitudes em relação à mudança (3 fatores), percepção de suporte organizacional (2 fatores), comprometimento organizacional (5 fatores), propriedade psicológica promotora (3 fatores) e propriedade psicológica preventiva (unifatorial). Os componentes do modelo multinível também foram caracterizados, com ênfase na exemplificação da multidimensionalidade das atitudes relativas às mudanças no contexto organizacional e da emersão de construtos preditivos para o nível de grupos. Do segundo estudo quantitativo (N = 699, J = 99, n = 7,06), 3 modelos empíricos multiníveis foram comprovados por meio da modelagem multinível: modelo de resistência afetiva à mudança, modelo de resistência cognitiva à mudança e modelo de resistência comportamental à mudança. Foram observados efeitos diretos intranível, efeitos diretos cross-level e efeitos de interação crosslevel, sendo constatada a diferenciação desses efeitos para as distintas dimensões da resistência à mudança. Destaca-se que práticas de gestão de desempenho em nível individual e senso de accountability em nível de grupos apresentaram efeitos diretos negativos sobre todas as dimensões de resistência à mudança. Destarte, esta pesquisa permitiu o desenvolvimento de um modelo de resistência à mudança, caracterizada como uma atitude de valência negativa que recebe, de forma simultânea em diferentes níveis de análise e diferenciada em suas dimensões afetiva, cognitiva e comportamental, a influência das percepções sobre vínculos indivíduo/organização, com reconhecimento das mudanças descritas como orgazining e geradas pelas rotinas organizacionais. Implicações teóricas, metodológicas e gerenciais foram apresentadas como possíveis contribuições da pesquisa e foi recomendada uma agenda de pesquisa para o aprofundamento do conhecimento sobre a temática.Change management literature shows that, although resistance to change is a widely used expression, there is still a lack of studies investigating factors which influence it. Thus, this research had the purpose of developing a resistance to change model, considering the influence of organizational support, organizational commitment, and psychological ownership perceptions, in a multilevel, atitudinal and organizing perspective. A theoretical multilevel hypothesized model was proposed and empirically tested in the federal institutions of higher education context, having the case files circulation routines as object of change, and considering the Eletronic Information System (SEI) as their artifact. Adopting a mixed-method approach, data were collected in three federal universities, through documents, interviews, focus groups and surveys. Two quantitative studies were conducted using descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, including exploratory factor analysis and multilevel modeling. A complementary qualitative step was carried out using content analysis with 26 a priori-defined categories. As research results, the change selected as object of study was characterized, proving the role of SEI as an artifact that promotes continuous changes in routines as well as the interdependence and the reflective potential of their participants. From the first quantitative study (N = 743), evidences of validity of the scales for the empirical context of the research were exposed: attitudes toward change (3 factors), perception of organizational support (2 factors), organizational commitment (5 factors), promotive psychological ownership (3 factors) and preventive psychological ownership (unifactorial). The multilevel model components were also characterized, highlighting the examples of the multidimensionality of the attitudes toward changes in the organizational context and the emergence of predictive constructs for the group level. From the second quantitative study (N = 699, J = 99, n = 7,06), 3 multilevel empirical models were confirmed through multilevel modeling: affective resistance to change model, cognitive resistance to change model and behavioral resistance to change model. Intralevel direct effects, cross-level direct effects and cross-level interaction effects were observed and the differentiation of these effects for the distinct dimensions of resistance to change was verified. It is worth noting that individual level performance management practices and group level accountability showed negative direct effects on all the dimensions of resistance to change. Therefore, this research allowed the development of a resistance to change model characterized as a negative valence attitude which receives, simultaneously in different levels of analysis and differently in its affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions, the influence of individual/organizational bonds perceptions, recognizing changes described as organizing and generated by organizational routines. Theoretical, methodological, and managerial implications were presented as possible research contributions and future research directions were provided for the deepening of knowledge on this subject