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Employee turnover and retention has been studied as a critical factor in efficiently managing information technology (IT) personnel and in organizational survival (Jiang & Klein, 2002; Thatcher, Stepina, & Boyle, 2003). The loss of key players and their associated intellectual capital from turnover can negatively impact organizational restructuring efforts during turbulent times and growth efforts during boom times (McCoy, Dixon, Sinur, & Cantara, November 2010). The IT industry has experienced both a significant shortage of qualified candidates (Thibodeau, 2012; TechAmerica, 2009) and a relatively high turnover rate among employees (Jiang & Klein, 2002); exacerbated by high career abandonment levels in the IT profession (Colomo-Palacios R., Casado-Lumbreras, Misra, & Soto-Acosta, 2014).
“Inadequate technical skills” are a primary barrier to achieving strategic goals and objectives (Morello, 2009; Morello, 2011). The rapid cycle of technological IT competencies and the current global economic climate require continuous training and retention strategies (Chen, Hwang, & Raghu, 2010; Mithas, Ramasubbu, & Sambamurthy, 2011; Laumer, Maier, Eckhardt, & Weitzel, 2011). The total benchmark cost (e.g., advertising and recruiting outlays) of losing an IT employee is estimated to be nearly 150% of annual salary (Watkin, 1990); it is unlikely that these costs have diminished. Thus, losing several high-level IT professionals in one year may cost an organization more than $1 million. Such high costs, in combination with frequent turnover makes employee retention a central concern for managers (Jiang & Klein, 2002). The ability to effectively retain talented IT employees more efficiently than other firms could be a sustainable competitive advantage.
Existing research on IT professionals has focused on which rewards and job characteristics predict positive attitudes, turnover intentions, and other antecedents to turnover (Moore, 2000a; Moore, 2000b). Typical job satisfaction conceptualizations and predictive models of turnover focus on job-level and organizational factors failing to recognize individual differences (Jiang & Klein, 2002).