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The effect of personality on IT personnel’s job-related attitudes: establishing a dispositional model of turnover intention across IT job types

  • Research Article
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Journal of Information Technology

Abstract

Research on IT personnel has observed that the major predictors for turnover intention are job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, less is known about how these predictors are determined and how they vary according to the different job types of IT personnel. Hence, we develop and evaluate a dispositional model of turnover intention across IT job types as the first approach in IT turnover research combining the personality traits of the five-factor model and the basic turnover model found among Western IS professionals into one research model. By the help of the model we analyze the role of personality in IT personnel turnover across four groups of IT roles: consultants, programmers, system engineers, and system administrators. The results of an empirical analysis of 813 IT personnel reveal significant differences across the four groups in terms of personality and job-related attitudes. In terms of personality traits, system engineers rank highest in openness and conscientiousness, IT consultants in extraversion, programmers in neuroticism, and system administrators in agreeableness. In 50% of all cases, personality traits are significant predictors for job-related attitudes. Additionally, they indirectly affect IT personnel turnover intention. Neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness are also important indirect predictors for turnover intention, whereas openness has only a weak effect and agreeableness no measurable effect.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems, Centre of Human Resources Information Systems, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

    Andreas Eckhardt

  2. Department for Information Systems and Services, Centre of Human Resources Information Systems, Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, Germany, Bamberg, Germany

    Sven Laumer, Christian Maier & Tim Weitzel

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  1. Andreas Eckhardt
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  2. Sven Laumer
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  3. Christian Maier
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  4. Tim Weitzel
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Correspondence to Andreas Eckhardt.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7 and A8.

Table A1 Discriminant validity for sample ‘IT consultants’
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Table A2 Discriminant validity for sample ‘programmers’
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Table A3 Discriminant validity for sample ‘system engineers’
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Table A4 Discriminant validity for sample ‘system administrators’
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Table A5 Factor loadings
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Table A6 Weights
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Table A7 Classification of categories to broad job types
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Table A8 IT job type descriptions
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Eckhardt, A., Laumer, S., Maier, C. et al. The effect of personality on IT personnel’s job-related attitudes: establishing a dispositional model of turnover intention across IT job types. J Inf Technol 31, 48–66 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2014.27

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