Analyzing IT personnel's perception of job-related factors in good and bad times

Abstract

The economic crisis during the last year which started as major problem solely for banks and other financial institutions evolved over time as a large challenge for companies in every industry all over the world. As IT companies in Germany survived the economic meltdown quite good, the question is how German IT personnel feel after a hard year filled of bad news about massive layoffs and less open positions. Therefore we compared the individual items of the major IT turnover constructs -- job satisfaction, organizational commitment, perceived alternatives and turnover intention -- for two groups of German IT personnel before (data gathered in May/June 2008) and after the bust of Lehman Brothers (June 2009). The results of our empirical analysis show that IT workers just changed their perception of job alternatives during the last twelve months. They reported a similar job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention in 2008 and in 2009.