Paths to Retention and Turnover in the IT Workforce : Understanding the Relationships Between Gender, Minority Status, Job, and Organizational Factors

Project Summary

Paths to Retention and Turnover in the IT Workforce: Understanding the Relationship Between Gender, Minority Status, Job and Organizational Factors focuses on the IT workplace attempts to identify what job, organizational and quality-of-working life (QWL) factors influence turnover intention within the current IT workforce, and in what way gender and race/ethnicity play a role in the relationships between job and organizational factors, QWL and intention to turnover. The study also addresses the IT Workplace theme of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Information Technology Workforce Initiative. All participating companies and their corresponding employees in this research project will remain anonymous. The names of companies and/or people will NOT be mentioned in reports and/or papers.

There is very little research examining a range of job and organizational factors that can affect women and underrepresented minorities in IT work. This proposed three-year multidisciplinary study will provide a systematic test of job and organizational factors in relation to retention and turnover for gender and minority status simultaneously. The primary study objective is to better understand how the IT workplace can enhance retention, especially among women and underrepresented minorities and to take this knowledge into practice (e.g. the development of a set of ‘best practices’ and an educational workshop). A secondary objective is to develop an improved, systematic set of measures that can be used by companies to assess and enhance their retention efforts appropriately and effectively.

Research Models

Based on existing empirical literature and theories and models, two possible mechanisms for the role of gender and minority status have been identified. The first postulates that gender and minority status have direct effects on job and organizational factors and both direct and indirect effects on QWL and intention to turnover (see Figure 1). It is hypothesized that indirect effects on QWL will be explained by mediating job and organizational factors and that indirect effects on intention to turnover will be explained by mediating job, organizational and QWL factors. The indirect pathways suggest that women and under-represented minorities may be faced with more negative job and organizational factors and QWL experiences than males and non-under-represented minorities, which, in turn, affects intention to turnover.

The second research model postulates that gender and race play a moderating role in the relationship between job and organizational factors and QWL and intention to turnover (see Figure 2). This model suggests that males, females, under-represented minorities and non-under-represented minorities all experience the same job and organizational factors, but that women and under-represented minorities have different attitudinal and behavioral reactions to similar organizational experiences and practices.

Funding

Funding for the research project is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF EIA-0120092)

The research project is conducted by the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement (CQPI) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

Please note: This research project has ended. A list of publications can be found under the Publications section. Conference paper presentations are made available in PDF.

The questionnaire we used is made available in the Tool Box section. A description of the questionairre development has been published in Behaviour and Information Technology 25, 5, 381-397. (For a full reference, see the Publications section)

Feel free to use the questionnaire as long as you refer to the authors.

Data for benchmarking can also be made available. For questions, contact Peter Hoonakker