Improving retention strategies for IT professionals working in the public sector

Despite much research interest, effective retention of IT professionals has proved difficult for many public sector organizations. By concentrating on intention to leave, researchers may not have provided a clear way to formulate effective retention strategies. Consequently, we used intention to stay as an alternative lens to identify factors that can reduce turnover of IT professionals. Our findings indicated that attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and identification with the organization all had a statistically significant relationship with intention to stay; attitude was the strongest. It was concluded that existing retention strategies needed to be refocused on the issues that make IT staff stay; a number of practical recommendations for IT managers are presente

Coherence and transparency: some advice for qualitative researchers

There is relatively little advice in the Engineering domain for undertaking qualitative studies. Researchers have to rely on generic guidance that may result in imprecise application of qualitative methods. A related discipline to Engineering is Information Systems (IS) and the experiences of the IS domain may provide some useful insights for undertaking qualitative studies. This paper synthesizes the guidance from the IS community for crafting high quality qualitative studies and manuscripts. It reports on five themes: i) Establishing philosophical underpinnings; ii) Clarifying theoretical aims; iii) Selecting qualitative methods; iv) Demonstrating rigour in qualitative data analysis; and v) Grappling with generalisation. The review stresses the importance of coherence and transparency for crafting qualitative research manuscripts and provides a list of reflective questions for qualitative research design

The impact of robo-advice on financial advisers: a qualitative case study

One of the most significant recent technological developments concerns the application of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to skill-intensive, knowledge-based jobs. The financial adviser is a role that has been identified as being under threat from automated robo-advice services. However, there are conflicting views on the future of human financial advisers. It has been argued that human financial advisers will soon become obsolete because robo-advisers are lower cost and make fewer mistakes. Conversely, it has been argued that financial investment is an emotional process that requires empathy and reassurance that cannot be provided by automated robo-advisers. In this exploratory study we use service encounter theory to explore the key elements of the financial adviser job role, identifying where human interaction with the client was considered to be valuable. Our findings suggest that roboadvisers are likely to augment rather than substitute human financial advisers

Artificial intelligence and data analytics: Emerging opportunities and challenges in financial services

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are providing a new opportunity to financial services firms to develop distinctive capabilities to differentiate themselves from their peers. Key to this differentiation is the ability to execute business in the most effective and efficient manner and to take the smartest possible business decisions. AI systems can process large amounts of data with levels of accuracy and consistency that is not possible for humans to achieve, providing a route to more accurate predictions and data-driven analytical decision making. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of AI for improving data analytics and decision making, current and potential applications of AI within financial services, operational challenges and potential solutions for AI adoption, and conclude with requirements for successful adoption of AI systems

The gap between career management expectations and reality - empirical insights from the IT industry

The Information Technology (IT) industry has become an important economic factor in many Western countries, but it is well known for suffering from skills shortages and high turnover rates. Organizational career management (OCM) may help to attract new talent and reduce IT turnover by satisfying individuals’ career needs. However, to date, little is known about what, exactly, IT professionals expect in terms of career-related support, and whether their expectations match with what IT organizations provide. This paper reports on a quantitative study that investigated what 1686 IT professionals in Switzerland, Germany and the UK expected and what their employers provided in terms of OCM. Findings indicate that there are substantial mismatches between OCM ‘supply’ and ‘demand’. The paper makes an important contribution by providing a more in-depth understanding of IT professionals’ OCM preferences, leading to various practical implications for IT organizations and beyond

Career anchors and preferences for organizational career management: A study of information technology professionals in three European countries

Careers research has moved beyond the notion of traditional careers in a stable, predictable work environment to a more individual perspective. However, individual agency in career management is still likely to involve interactions between organizations and individuals. This is particularly evident in organizational career management (OCM). Career anchor theory has shed light on the work preferences of professionals but little research has examined relationships between career anchors and how people enact their careers, or how these constructs and their relationships might differ between countries. We report a quantitative study of 1,629 IT professionals from 10 organizations in Switzerland, Germany and the UK. After allowing for control variables, career anchor scores explained statistically significant amounts of variance in preferences for five of the six categories of OCM practices. Some of the connections between career anchors and OCM preferences followed naturally from their content, but others were less self-evident, or even seemingly contradictory. There were some significant differences between nationalities, with the UK tending to be the outlier. These differences were partly but not entirely consistent with prior research. This study expands understanding of the interplay of individual values and OCM and draws on previous work to offer a new classification of OCM practices

Organizational boundaries and beyond: a new look at the components of a boundaryless career orientation

Purpose The key purpose of this paper is to develop a new conceptualization of the boundaryless career—a widely acknowledged contemporary career concept—that reflects its original description more fully than previous literature has done, and to apply this conceptualization in an empirical investigation of career behavior and intentions of a large sample of European Information Technology (IT) professionals. Design/methodology/approach As part of a large study of IT professionals in Europe (N = 1,350), we had three research objectives. First, we developed and empirically tested a new operationalization of a person’s boundaryless career orientation (BCO) that reflects the originally proposed boundaryless career meanings more closely than existing approaches. Second, we used this to identify in a holistic manner different patterns of BCO. Third, we examined the nature and extent of links between BCO and self-reported career behavior and intentions. Findings We identified five BCO factors that differentiate individuals into three distinct clusters. Although organizational boundaries appeared to be salient for most individuals, they did not differentiate the clusters. Instead, geographical mobility preference and rejection of career opportunities emerged as highly differentiating but hitherto rarely examined types of career boundaries. Practical implications Our findings can help HR managers to gain a better understanding of different mobility preferences amongst different groups of employees, which could lead to the development and implementation of more refined reward schemes and career development practices in organizations. Originality/value This study provides a new operationalization of the BCO that is grounded in its original definition and offers a new empirically tested 15-item BCO measure. It contributes to career research with scarce empirical findings regarding the components of the BCO, their salience for individuals, and the connections between BCO and behavior

A re-conceptualization of the interpretive flexibility of information technologies: redressing the balance between the social and the technical

Interpretive flexibility – the capacity of a specific technology to sustain divergent opinions – has long been recognised as playing an important role in explaining how technical artefacts are socially constructed. What is less clear is how a system’s technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly. This gap in the literature has largely arisen because recent contributions to this debate have tended to be rather one-sided, focussing almost solely upon the role of the human agent in shaping the technical artefact, and in so doing either downplaying or ignoring the artefact’s shaping potential. The broad aim of this study was to reappraise the nature and role of interpretive flexibility but giving as much consideration to how an information system’s technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly, as we do to its potential for social construction. In this paper we use the results of two in-depth case studies, in order to propose a re-conceptualisation of the role of interpretive flexibility. In short, this model helps explain how the initial interpretations of stakeholders are significantly influenced by the scope and adaptability of the system’s functionality. Stakeholder interpretations will then, in turn, influence how the system’s functionality is appropriated and exploited by users, to allow divergent interpretations to be realised and sustained

Reassessing the protean career concept: empirical findings, conceptual components, and measurement

The protean career concept is a widely acknowledged contemporary career model, but conceptual and empirical analysis of the model is scarce. We provide an integrative literature review of empirical research and note that the research is hampered by inconsistent use of terminology and methodological limitations. First, we show that the two protean metacompetencies-adaptability and identity-have been relatively neglected as the research has evolved. Second, we describe how preexisting protean measures are limited in covering the full range of the concept. Finally, we draw on career theory to suggest four conceptual components as a basis for future model development and offer suggestions for research that tests the utility of the protean career concept in relation to other similar constructs. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

The impact of salient cultural practices on the outcome of IS implementation

A number of information system (IS) studies have adopted organisational culture (OC) theory to investigate IS implementations. The studies highlight that members will reach consensus or agreement in the use of an IS but also experience inevitable tensions and ambiguities in the use of the IS. However, literature related to IS implementation/OC has rarely examined the influence that the saliency of specific cultural practices may have on the success or failure of IS implementations. Using a case study approach, we adopted the “soft positivism” research philosophy to collect data, underpinned by Martin’s (1992) integration and differentiation perspectives of OC to study the organisational implementation of an IS. These perspectives served as interpretive lenses through which to explain how members’ salient behaviours towards an IS evolved during the implementation process. Our study augments the IS implementation/OC literature by demonstrating how salient cultural practices influence the outcome of IS implementation