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Top1. Background Of The Study
Indian IT -ITeS industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in India and plays an important role in employment generation and country’s economic development. Indian IT industry contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased 1.2% in Financial Year 1998 to 7.7% to the country’s GDP and is expected to contribute 10% of country’s GDP by 2025 (India Brand Equity Foundation, 2016).
Researchers believe that IT employees are different from non-IT employees in terms of job design or job redesign that lead into high motivation and job satisfaction. Beecham et al. (2008) systematically reviewed ninety-two papers relating to software engineers and found as they are creative, self-driven, who required feedback on their performance, valuable to the organization, autonomous or need for independence. On the other side Beecham et al. (2007) confirmed feedback and autonomy are the motivators for software engineering. Keeping these factors while designing job for software or technical employees Hackman & Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model (1975, 1976 &1980) is one of the pioneering models to motivate employees. Job Characteristics Model consists of skill variety, task significance, task identity, autonomy and feedback that result in high motivation and job satisfaction. Researchers found that autonomy and feedback are important characteristics among five to increase employee’s job satisfaction and motivation among technical employees (Lim, 2008; Mc Knight,2009; Chen,2007, Morris & Venkatesh,2010; LeBlanc,2013, Fried and Ferris, 1987; Humphrey et al., 2007; Denton and Klieman, 2001; Said and Munap 2010; Johanim & Yahaya, 2016; Kelloway & Barling,1991 & Reddy & Azeem, 2011).
Indian IT industry’s is one of the highly competitive industry that is characterized by stressful working environment with high role stress (Colomo-Palacios et al., 2014b; Karad, 2010). Past studies confirmed that role stressors such as role conflict and role ambiguity are significant predictors of job dissatisfaction and high turnover intentions among technical employees (Goldstein & Rockart, 1984; Mc Knight et al., 2009; Igbaria & Siegel, 1992; Igbaria & Greenhaus, 1992; Baroudi & Gingerberg, 1985; Goldstein, 1989; Li & Sahini, 1991; Sethi et al., 1999; Lacity et al., 2008; Chen,2008; Zhao & Rashid, 2010; Joseph et al., 2007; Klaus et al., 2014 & R Naidoo, 2018).
Indian software employees need to perform various roles not only within an organization but also outside the organization is called as Boundary Spanning Activities (Guimaraes & Igbaria, 1992). When employees are exposed to other departments and organizations, these phenomena bring them into contact with multiple and various role senders that result into role conflict and role ambiguity among Information System personnel (Kahn et al., 1964 & Baroudi, 1985). Empirical support with several studies found that Boundary Spanning Activities (BSA) increases role conflict (Kahn et al., 1964; Baroudi, 1985 & Miles & Perrault, 1976) on the other hand Lysonski (1985) and Lyonski et al. (1989) have partially confirmed that Boundary Spanning Activities (BSA) increases role ambiguity as well. Joseph et al. (2007) conducted meta-analysis among Information System personnel and confirmed that role conflict and role ambiguity were positively correlated with turnover intention that resulted in low job satisfaction (Bakker et al., 2005).
The biggest challenge for Indian IT industry is to minimize role stressors at levels of organization and the IT sector can be categorized with high role stress and job dissatisfaction (Karad, 2010). In addition, autonomy and feedback plays an important role in order to increase job satisfaction among software or technical employees. On the basis of above study, the present study conceptualized a model of role stressors, autonomy, feedback and job satisfaction in a more differentiated way as shown in Fig1. The present determines the moderating effects of organizational levels in role stressors, autonomy, feedback and job satisfaction among Indian software employees. Researchers found inconsistent results while determining the moderating effects of organizational levels between autonomy, feedback, role stressors and job satisfaction and most of the studies were in western context (Kahn et al., 1964; Hamner & Tosi, 1974; Schuler & Blank, 1979; Fisher & Gitelson,1983; Abdel-Halim, 1978, Van Dijkhuizen & rcicllc, 1980; Schuler, 1975 ; Drory, 1981; Beehr & Drexler, 1986; Ratsoy et al., 1986; Westman, 1992; Kim et al., 2009; Natha, 1980; Jackson & Schuler, 1985 & Schieman et al., 2006; Herman 1988; Lin et al., 2011 & Said & Munap, 2010 & Aloysius,2012) .