While the U.S. economy is recovering slowly, reports tell us that the supply of information systems (IS) professionals is declining and demand is once again on the rise. With organizations challenged in their efforts to hire additional staff, IS professionals are being asked to do even more, often leading to burnout, turnover, and turn-away intentions. Building on Ahuja et al.'s (2007) work on turnover intentions and using the job demandsÐ resources model of burnout as an organizing framework for the antecedents to exhaustion from IS career experience (EISCE), this illustrative research note draws attention to exhaustion in IS professionals that spans an individual's professional career. Findings indicate that IS professionals' perceived workload (demand) was associated with higher levels of EISCE, whereas fairness and perceived control of career (resources) were associated with lower levels of EISCE. The influence of EISCE on affective commitment to the IS profession (ACISP) was found to be negative and, ultimately, ACISP fully mediated the effect of EISCE on the intention to turn away from an IS career. The results suggest the importance of studying IS professionals' perceptions regarding the demands and resources associated with working in the IS field when testing exhaustion across IS career experience.
Information systems professionals increasingly face changes in their work environment. Some of these changes are incremental, but many require fundamental shifts in mindset (referred to as a mindshift). Within the domain of software development, previous research has determined that veteran developers experience difficulty making the transition to new forms of development. Although prior research has brought awareness to the problems caused by a mindshift and has provided some insight, it has not answered the question of why software developers have difficulty making the transition. This study begins to answer that question by positing and examining the mindshift learning theory (MLT). The MLT suggests that the degree of perceived novelty of the fundamental concepts that characterize the new mindset will impact learning. Specifically, concepts may be perceived as novel (i.e., not familiar to the learner), changed (i.e., similar to a known concept, but a different meaning in the new context), or carryover (i.e., known concept with a similar meaning in the new context). As an exemplar mindshift learning situation, this study explores the phenomenon in the context of software developers transitioning from traditional to object-oriented (OO) software development. Findings indicate that software developers had higher knowledge scores on the OO concepts they perceived as novel or carryover compared to those they perceived as changed. Thus, developers experienced detrimental interference from their existing traditional software development knowledge structure when trying to learn OO software development. The findings have implications for organizations and individuals as an understanding of mindshifts could mean an easier transition through decreased frustration and a more effective learning process.
Software developers face a constant barrage of innovations designed to improve the development environment. Yet stress/strain among software developers has been steadily increasing and is at an all-time high, while their productivity is often questioned. Why, if these innovations are meant to improve the environment, are developers more stressed and less productive than they should be? Using a combination of cognitive style and person-environment fit theories as the theoretical lens. this study examines one potential source of stress/strain and productivity impediment among software developers. Specifically, this paper examines the fit between the preferred cognitive style of a software developer and his or her perception of the cognitive style required by the job environment, and the effect of that fit on stress/strain and performance. Data collected from a field study of 123 (object-oriented) software developers suggest that performance decreases and stress increases as this gap between cognitive styles becomes wider. Using surface response methodology, the precise fit relationship is modeled. The interaction of the developer and the environment provides explanatory power above and beyond either of the factors separately, suggesting that studies examining strain and performance of developers should explicitly consider and measure the cognitive style fit between the software developer and the software development environment. In practice, managers can use the results to help recognize misfit, its consequences, and the appropriate interventions (such as training or person/task matching).