Managing IT Employee Attitudes that Lead to Turnover: Integrating a Person-Job Fit Perspective

IT staff turnover and low retention rates are costly and contribute to organizational inefficiency. The authors extend the existing literature by investigating whether differences in individual preferences for various job characteristics as well as the ability of organizations to meet employee expectations (person-job fit) affect contentment levels and, consequently, attrition rates. Specifically, they investigate the question, “Does a person-job fit perspective provide more explanatory power with regard to antecedents to turnover among IT professionals than either person or job characteristics alone?” for systems developers. Survey results indicate that a person-job fit perspective does provide more explanatory power for certain job attributes, but not for others. In particular, the relationships between system developers' preferred and actual job levels of social support as well as of job challenge are better indicators of attitudes than actual levels of either attribute alone. However, actual job challenge and actual job stress (as perceived by workers) are, individually, better predictors of employee self-esteem, burnout, and alienation than their respective degrees of fit with employee preferences.