Turnover intentions of information technology employees within South African firms: the role of cognitive engagement, job satisfaction and job performance

Abstract

The decision of an information technology (IT) employee to leave their organisation introduces challenges for organisations and IT software project success. Since 1980 MIS managers have been concerning themselves in keeping resignation rates low. However IT employee turnover is still a problem experienced in practice today. Thus the turnover of information technology employees represent a key IT management issue. To improve our understanding of IT employee turnover, this research study draws on the constructs of job satisfaction, job performance and cognitive engagement. More specifically, this research study developed and tested a model of how the understudied construct of cognitive engagement amongst IT employees influences their job satisfaction and job performance and ultimately their turnover intention. Two dimensions of cognitive engagement were considered. These were attention, defined as the amount of cognitive resources that a person can allocate to think about work, and absorption, defined as intensity of immersion and focus that one experiences when working. These two dimensions of cognitive engagement were hypothesized to influence two important intermediary variables that prior research has shown to be important in the turnover intention of employees, namely job satisfaction and job performance. Job characteristics, namely skill variety, task identity, task significance, job feedback, and autonomy were also considered to be important to both job satisfaction and turnover intentions of IT employees. Other factors such as job rewards were also considered. A survey methodology was used to test the research model. This required that a questionnaire instrument be developed to collect data from IT professionals in South Africa. The study’s variables were operationalised from the literature and multi-item scales were employed. First, the IT employees of randomly selected companies from the McGregor’s Who Owns Whom directory were invited to participate in the study by completing the questionnaire. This was later supplemented by a non-probability snowball sampling approach. Data was collected over three months, and a total of 105 useable responses from IT professionals in South Africa were collected. After removing incomplete responses, handling missing data, and checking for outliers, the data was checked for reliability and validity. First, an exploratory factor analysis was carried out to ensure the unidimensionality, convergent and discriminant validity of the constructs. Then scale reliability was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha. Composite scores for all multi-item variables were then calculated and relationships examined using Pearson’s correlation analysis. Finally hypothesized relationships were tested using multiple regression. The final results supported job satisfaction as a determinant of turnover intention. Also, job satisfaction completely mediated the effect of attention, as a dimension of cognitive engagement, on turnover intention. Attention also showed a correlation with job performance and fully mediates the effect of task significance, as a job characteristic, on job satisfaction. The employee turnover phenomenon is important to both IT management practice and research. This study addressed this key IT management issue by determining the extent to which job vi satisfaction, job performance, and cognitive engagement are important to the turnover intentions of South African IT employees. Results have useful implications for practice.