Investigating Combinations of Push and Pull Factors to Explain Turnover Intention of IT Professionals
Barbara Prommegger, Michael Dinger, Jason Bennett Thatcher, Helmut Krcmar · 2024
Despite many years of research examining the turnover of IT professionals, turnover rates in the IT workforce remain consistently high. In this paper, we assume that it is not single factors and their individual interactions, but the exact combination of these factors that drive turnover behavior. We, therefore, examine configurations of four known push and pull factors that influence turnover decisions of IT professionals, namely shocks, job embeddedness, job satisfaction, and job alternatives. We use fsQCA to analyze data gathered from 612 IT professionals to examine the role of combinations of these factors in predicting high and low turnover intentions. Our results introduce seven types of IT professionals with different combinations of push and pull factors and their resulting level of turnover intention. The paper highlights the crucial role of shock events, in isolation but also in combination with job satisfaction and organizational embeddedness, and provides valuable insights and guidance for companies looking to mitigate their IT professionals' desire for alternative employment opportunities.