Abstract

An Experimental
Although much research has focused on factors
Investigation of driving the turnover behaviors of information
technology (IT) professionals once they are in an

Turnover Intentions employment relationship, little is known about their ex

ante intentions to stay when embarking on a new
employment relationship. The present study
Among New investigates the effects of individual and situational
factors on the turnover intentions of new entrants into
Entrants in IT the IT workforce. Arguably, the IT revolution of the
past decade, both at its peak as well as its decline,
has changed the expectations and values of this
population of workers considerably. Adopting an
Ritu Agarwal interactionist perspective, we examine the interaction
between individual preferences for organizational risk
University of Maryland and variety, and the level of entrepreneurial risk
inherent in the business model of a given employer
Thomas W. Ferratt together with the amount of variety that IT work with
University of Dayton that employer offers. The posited relationships are
tested in a policy capturing experiment with
graduating information systems majors as subjects.
Prabuddha De The results provide support for the interactionist
Purdue University perspective, while at the same time questioning its
basic premise.

ACM Categories: K.6, K.6.1, K.7, K.7.1, K.7.2

Keywords: Turnover Intentions, IT Professionals,

Situational Risk, Situational Variety, Experimental
Approach, New Entrants

Introduction
Scholars have argued that IT human capital
represents a strategic resource for firms, and has the
ability to bestow competitive advantage (Wade &
Hulland, 2004; Bharadwaj, 2000). Thus, the turnover
and retention of IT professionals persists as an
important managerial concern (Luftman, 2005;
Luftman & McLean, 2004; Hsu et al., 2003). To this
end, IS and organizational behavior researchers have
examined a range of individual level factors as
explanatory variables for intention to stay and
turnover among IS and other populations of
employees, including career anchors (Hsu et al.,
2003), perceived ease of movement, job
dissatisfaction, and organizational commitment (e.g.,
Igbaria & Greenhaus, 1992; March & Simon, 1958;
Mobley et al., 1979; Hom & Griffeth, 1995).
Researchers have also suggested that deliberate
managerial actions, including IT organizations’ human
resource management (HRM) practices, such as
compensation and training (Agarwal & Ferratt, 1999;
2001; 2002; Slaughter & Ang, 2002), and internal
work characteristics such as job design (Thatcher et
al., 2002), are important determinants of intention to

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 8 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
stay and turnover. Finally, IS scholars have examined nature and context of the IT profession and the
the effects of discrepancies between individual needs upheaval it has witnessed, in this paper we posit that
and what the organization supplies as determinants of risk and variety are two important explanatory
turnover intention (Jiang & Klein, 2002). variables for the length of time an IT professional
would choose to stay with a new employer. Arguably,
In spite of the significant body of research focused on
the IT revolution of the past decade, both at its peak
understanding turnover among IT professionals,
as well as its decline, has changed the expectations
however, there is a notable gap in this literature.
and values of this population of workers considerably.
Extant research examines the factors that influence IT
During the mid 90s, Y2K compliance concerns
professionals’ staying or leaving behavior after they
created a strong demand for IT workers with specific
are already in the employment relationship. This
skills that declined after the year 2000. The years
research, thus, provides limited insight into IT
1996-1999, riding upon the Internet revolution, were
professionals’ ex ante intentions to stay when they
characterized by a severe shortage of IT workers with
are entering a new employment relationship. High
skills in the new technologies and a supply-demand
costs associated with recruitment and socialization
asymmetry that was unprecedented. This resulted in
suggest that it is important for organizations to retain
a “careerist” mindset among IT workers (Agarwal &
new hires for a reasonable length of time so as to
Ferratt, 1999; Feldman & Weitz, 1991), where
recover their investment (Griffeth et al., 2000). Thus, it
opportunities for financial gain caused individuals to
is critical to be able to isolate factors that predict how
change employers frequently. Since the turn of the
long the individual will stay with a particular
century and the slowdown in economic activity, there
organization at the stage of organizational entry
is an ostensible oversupply of high-tech workers,
(Cable & Judge, 1996).
although projections of occupational growth suggest
Human resource researchers and practitioners have that any oversupply is likely to be temporary (United
long been intrigued by the question of how individuals States Department of Labor, 2004). Thus, this is an
embarking upon a career make employment choices, interesting occupational group to study because of
also referred to as the “attraction process” (Schneider, the turmoil it is experiencing.
1987). The decision about where to accept the first
We pose the broad question: “How do individual and
employment offer is a significant one: early work
situational factors interact in explaining a new IT
experiences and the socialization that occurs often
workforce entrant’s turnover intention?” We examine
have a profound impact on later stages of an
two “matched” individual and situational factors that
individual’s work life and have been shown to be a
are likely to be important for this set of high-tech
proximal cause of multiple significant outcomes such
workers: for the organization, the two factors are the
as turnover, satisfaction, and performance (Holton &
level of entrepreneurial risk inherent in the business
Russel, 1999). In general, the choice of the first job is
model of the employer and the amount of variety that
fraught with uncertainty since individuals typically
an IT job with the organization offers. From the
have little or no work experience to help shape their
individual perspective, these two factors are reflected
expectations about employers and workplace
in a new IT professional’s preferences for risk and
conditions in a concrete fashion. They are inundated
variety. These matched individual and situational
with information and advice about prospective
factors are consistent with the needs-supplies
employers from a variety of sources. Friends, family,
perspective in models of person-organization fit
and others in the social circle exert overt and covert
(Kristof, 1996). Risk and variety preferences
pressure to accept employment with organizations
represent individual needs, while organizational risk
that provide certain inducements, such as rewards,
and variety represent what the organization supplies
status, or security. Career placement centers and
to meet those needs.
counselors at academic institutions provide advice on
appropriate places of employment, and indeed, on We report the results of an experiment with new
careers to pursue. And recruiters compete for the entrants into the IT workforce where the level of risk
applicants’ attention, particularly in a tight labor and variety in a given employment context were
market, by painting a vivid picture of the benefits and manipulated. Such a research design allows us to
rewards of employment in their organization. Against gain further insights into an important organizational
this backdrop, early career entrants are challenged concern, the effect that its practices are likely to have
with synthesizing all this information and making an on turnover. We use four hypothetical work settings
informed choice about whom to work for in their first characterized by a parsimonious set of factors and
job. investigate their effects on future employees while
controlling for all other situational factors. As such,
Research in organizational behavior suggests that
because all other organizational factors are held
both individual and situational factors play a role in
constant for each individual while risk and variety are
organizational entry decisions. Drawing upon the

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 9 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
varied, the design of this study provides a powerful
basis for examining the ability of the organization to
affect turnover intentions via its positioning related to
risk and variety. Inspection of the moderating effects
of individual preferences provides an understanding
of the role of selection (of IT professionals with high or
low preferences for risk and variety) and how
organizations can expect their selection processes to
interact with their “retention” practices (related to
organizational risk and variety). From the perspective
of the IT professional, the study provides a basis for
understanding the effects of their personal
preferences (for risk and variety) on their intentions to
stay with an employer, potentially offering guidance
for the job search and choice process.
Theoretical Background and Research
Hypotheses
Individual and Situational Influences in the
Workplace
The influence of individual and situational factors on
individuals’ work attitudes and behaviors continues to
be the subject of much discussion among scholars in
organizational behavior. Among the individual factors
examined in prior research, both dispositions such as
personality variables and other more malleable
characteristics such as job attitudes have been
studied. While dispositions are relatively stable
characteristics of individuals (Fridhandler, 1986),
situational factors are the wide range of influences
that characterize the individual’s work context and
environment. Early influential work by Staw and Ross
(1985) demonstrating that job satisfaction remained
considerably stable across time and across work
situations provided initial support for the relative
primacy of dispositional influences. Based on this
work, scholars questioned the efficacy of managerial
interventions such as supervision and training or
situational factors inherent in the work environment in
promoting job satisfaction and other affective and
behavioral work outcomes.
Since the publication of Staw and Ross’ work,
researchers have offered some criticisms of the
research and continued to examine the individual-
situational issue from multiple perspectives. For
instance, Gerhart (1987) raised questions about a
potential age bias in Staw and Ross’ study, and
observed that their assertions about the lack of
influence of job-redesign programs were not
grounded in empirical evidence. Newton and Keenan
(1991) noted the existence of a methodological
problem with Staw and Ross’ work in that they used
correlational analysis to test for stability in job
satisfaction. Newton and Keenan’s analysis of the
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
stability of job attitudes and affect among young
professional engineers led them to conclude that
individual and situational influences both matter in
work reactions. Several other studies also support the
simultaneous existence of situational and individual
effects (Griffin, 2001; Glynn, 1998; Steel & Rentsch,
1997; Banks & Henry, 1993). For example, Steel &
Rentsch examined job satisfaction across a ten-year
time period and showed that after accounting for the
effects of attitudinal stability, job characteristics
explained significant variance in outcomes. In their
study, the success of job design interventions
interacted with the personal characteristics of
individuals.
Today, one perspective on the debate whether it is
the person or the situation that determines behavior is
the interactionist view of organizational behavior, as
articulated in Schneider’s (1987) influential attraction-
selection-attrition (ASA) framework. In this
perspective, organizational behavior is viewed as
being influenced by the characteristics of both the
individual and the organization. Scholars in the
interactionist tradition essentially reject the idea of
using either individual or organizational factors in
isolation to predict work attitudes and behavior and
exhort researchers to pay attention to a richer set of
factors that can influence these outcomes. Examples
of interactionist research may be found in the
extensive literature on person-organization (P-O) fit,
which argues and presents empirical evidence for the
fact that employment attitudes and behaviors are
influenced by the congruence between individual
characteristics and organizational environments (e.g.,
Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown et al., 2005).
In the IT literature, Agarwal and Ferratt (2000)
proposed an extension to Rousseau’s (1995) theory
of psychological contracts and argued that
staying/leaving behavior would be influenced by an IT
professional’s career motives, conceptualized as
consisting of a preferred employment duration, career
anchor, and career stage. Implicit in their arguments
was the assertion that these three individual
characteristics would change over the life time of an
IT professional. In later work, Agarwal et al. (2001;
2002) suggested that preferred employment duration
with a specific organization is jointly determined by
career anchor, life stage, and competencies. They
further argued that the type of organization would
moderate the effects of these individual
characteristics on preferred employment duration with
that organization. Thus, in their conceptualization,
individual preferences for length of stay with an
employer are driven by both individual and situational
factors.
Although there is now a growing corpus of work
devoted to understanding the effects of individual and
10 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
situational variables on job-related attitudes and
behaviors, there are also many unanswered
questions (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005) and
opportunities for further work. First is the crucial issue
of the number of characteristics of persons and
situations that serve as explanations for behavior.
From a theoretical perspective, fewer characteristics
are useful because they provide a more parsimonious
explanation. From a managerial perspective, fewer
characteristics should be easier and less costly to
both evaluate when screening potential recruits for
employment and to influence in the organizational
environment. Much prior work has focused on profiles
of individuals and organizations that involve a large
number of variables. For example, the Organizational
Culture Profile (OCP) developed by O’Reilly et al.
(1991) has 54 value statements that yield eight
factors for individual values and seven factors for
organizational values. With a goal of parsimony, one
unanswered question we address is whether a
smaller number of important individual and
organizational characteristics explain an individual
outcome. Specifically, we focus on two such fit
characteristics: risk and variety.
The second issue concerns itself with the
characteristics of specific occupational groups and
the work environments that typify the organizations
they are employed in. Holland’s (1985) influential
typology of occupations was developed for the
purpose of classifying vocational interests and
preferences. In this typology, both people and
environments are characterized as Realistic,
Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and
Conventional (RIASEC). In performing a meta-
analysis of this theory, Barrick et al. (2003) note that
the essence of RIASEC is that an “employee’s
satisfaction with a job, as well as propensity to leave
that job, depend on the degree to which the
individual’s personality matches his or her
occupational environment” (p. 46). However, the
RIASEC model specifies occupational types (and
associated work environments) at a high level of
generality, representing distal variables in the
prediction of actual work behaviors and attitudes.
Moreover, the typology was constructed to be
applicable to workers of all types, independent of their
specific occupational status. Thus, a second issue we
address here is the identification of factors (both
individual and organizational) that are likely to be
more salient to the specific population of IT workers.
Conceptual Model
The conceptual model underlying this research is
shown in Figure 1. As indicated there, we argue that
the effects of situational risk on turnover intention are
moderated by individual preferences for risk.
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
Similarly, the effects of the variety offered by the
employer (or the situation) are moderated by
individual preferences for variety. The existence and
importance of preferences in work-related attitudes
and behaviors is underscored by Dawis (1991): he
notes that traits influence values that, in turn,
influence preferences. Preferences are viewed as
being more proximal to choices among alternatives
than values (Dawis, 1991; Judge & Cable, 1997) and
represent the needs and wants that individuals are
trying to satisfy via an employment relationship. To
illustrate, an example of a personality trait is
openness to experience, that would be reflected in
work values that assign importance to broad-ranging
work experiences. These work values then yield the
individual characteristic of variety preference. We
further note that in examining these effects, it is
important to control for an individual’s propensity to
stay. Each of the constructs and relationships is
elaborated upon below.
IT Workers and Situational Influences
Considerable prior research has examined the
motivations and management of high-tech workers in
the information technology field (e.g., Cougar &
Zawacki, 1980; Igbaria et al., 1991; Saxenian, 1994;
Agarwal & Ferratt, 1999). Implicit in this research is
the recognition of IT organizations and workers as
important economic forces and interesting
occupational groups worthy of investigation. Of
particular note for this study are findings that IT
workers possess a high growth-need strength
(Cougar & Zawacki, 1980) and seek variety and
technical challenge in job assignments (Hamblen,
2002). Further evidence for the importance of
studying this group of workers separately can be
found in surveys of the key issues confronting IT
management, where attracting, developing, and
retaining IT professionals consistently emerges as a
critical management concern (Luftman, 2005;
Luftman & McLean, 2004; Brancheau et al., 1996).
In the past decade, this occupational group has
witnessed a significant upheaval in at least two
related areas relevant to employment. First,
increasing organizational dependence on information
technology fueled by the Internet revolution resulted
in a major supply-demand asymmetry during the
second half of the previous decade that still persists
for certain technical competencies. Second, the
business climate has been characterized by
considerable IT-based entrepreneurial activity and
innovation, driven largely by the capabilities offered
by new information technologies.
11 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
 Preferred Risk
Situational
Risk
Situational
Variety
Preferred
Variety
Figure 1. Conceptual Model of Individual and Situational Influences
With burgeoning demand, organizations struggled to
recruit and retain IT workers, and IT wages were
driven up as a result. IT turnover rates as high as
20% were reported in some industries, further
exacerbating organizational costs associated with
maintaining the IT human capital base (Agarwal &
Ferratt, 1999). Given the challenges associated with
managing this occupational group, it is useful to
attempt to characterize organizations in terms of
aspects that are likely to influence the decision of IT
workers to remain in the employment relationship for
a greater length of time. As explained below, we
argue that risk and variety represent two important
situational characteristics with matching individual
preferences that are relevant to IT workers’ turnover
intentions. However, as noted by researchers in
human capital theory, labor economics, and
organizational behavior (e.g., Lazear, 1995; Topel &
Ward, 1992; Rousseau, 1990), there may be
differences in individuals’ propensities to stay in a job.
We, therefore, include such a propensity as a control
variable for turnover intention.
Controlling for Propensity to Stay
One important individual difference variable that
serves as a predictor of job mobility is the inherent
propensity to be a “stayer” or a “mover” (Topel &
Ward, 1992). While movers exhibit considerable job
mobility, stayers are characterized by relatively long
tenure with specific employers. Thus, in a similar
organizational situation, stayers are likely to exhibit
lower turnover intentions than movers. The notion that
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 12
Turnover
Intention
Propensity
To
Stay
individuals possess distinct propensities to stay with
an employer is also reflected in Rousseau’s (1995)
characterization of “careerists.” Careerists regard
their current employment situation as merely a
stepping stone to better opportunities. In a study of
the orientations of recent graduates toward their first
job, Rousseau (1990) found that certain individuals
were seeking to move quickly through employment
situations in search of advancement. These careerists
expected to stay with an organization for less than
three years on average. At the other extreme,
individuals low on careerism expected to stay for five
or more years.
The difference between propensity to stay found in
the economics and organizational behavior literatures
is informative. This construct from the economics
literature is an individual difference inferred from
behavioral observation. By contrast, it is based on
cognitions in the organizational behavior literature.
Behavioral observation indicates the validity of the
construct.
Since we seek to control for this variable prior to
behavior, we use a cognitively-based definition of the
construct. Individuals asked to think generally about
how long they would stay with an employer need an
anchor to describe that employer. We make the
assumption that this cognitive expectation or
propensity to stay is anchored in an employer that the
individual would prefer. Another anchor that could be
used is any employer; however, the uncertainties
associated with this abstract employer would most
likely be much greater than those associated with one
Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
for which the individual would prefer to work, leading
to a construct whose measurement would be
inherently less reliable. In our model, propensity to
stay refers to the individual’s expected employment
duration with an employer for which the individual
would prefer to work, i.e., an ideal employer.
It is important to note that our conceptualization of
propensity to stay clarifies the distinction between
preferred employment duration as discussed in
Agarwal and Ferratt (2000) and preferred
employment duration with a specific organization in
Agarwal et al. (2001; 2002). Propensity to stay is a
relatively stable individual difference variable that
reflects inherent staying tendencies with an ideal
employer. We recognize that an individual’s ideal
employer may change over time, but we would expect
that change to evolve gradually over time, e.g., as the
individual moves through life and career stages. In
effect, then, propensity to stay is an individual’s
preferred employment duration within the context of
an ideal employer. This conceptualization, which is
similar to that in Agarwal and Ferratt (2000), is distinct
from preferred employment duration with a specific
organization, which is based on the interaction
between the individual and specific situational
variables (see Agarwal et al., 2001; 2002). If a
specific organization would be identical to an
individual’s ideal employer, then preferred
employment duration with that specific organization
would be identical to the individual’s propensity to
stay.
Situational Risk
Organizations have different levels of employment
risk and commensurate returns associated with them.
Prior research has tended to focus more on the
“returns” aspect of organizations, by considering
attributes such as pay and reward systems. However,
we suggest that the returns associated with a
particular employment situation are likely to be
evaluated in the context of the risks that the employer
embodies. It is a truism to assert that advances in
technology are changing organizations. In particular,
web-based technologies led to the emergence of
young entrepreneurial ventures in the shape of
dotcom organizations during the latter half of the
1990s. This entrepreneurial activity was
unprecedented in volume: in 1999 alone, 96 Internet
companies went public, accounting for a total funding
of $6.7 billion (Tice, 2000). Some of the attractions of
dotcom organizations for IT professionals are the
excitement and the potentially large financial gains,
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
which may come with considerable risk (Cher, 2000).
Indeed, the much-publicized failures of a number of
entrepreneurial ventures exposed the risk inherent in
their business models.
At the same time, traditional brick and mortar
organizations are also transforming themselves by
focusing on core competencies and shedding
functions that are peripheral to their main mission.
The ostensible reason for this shift is that a focus on
core competencies should improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the organization, thereby increasing
returns to key stakeholders. Many of these
transformations are IT-enabled. Increasing reliance
on IT increases the vulnerability of the organization to
a scarce supply of IT professionals or short-staying IT
professionals when the organization requires firm-
specific competencies, thereby amplifying business
risk. Thus, while IT-enabled business innovation
offers an opportunity for reward, these rewards are
not without risk. Theories of choice assert individuals
will evaluate risk/reward tradeoffs in their decision-
making processes (Kahneman et al., 1982). These
theories also argue that the level at which risk is
traded off with reward differs across individuals.
All other things being equal, situational risk is likely to
be positively related to turnover intention. For
example, between two individuals in situations with
the same reward, the one in the situation with the
higher risk is likely to have the higher turnover
intention. However, there is considerable evidence to
suggest that individuals vary in their risk-taking
propensities (e.g., Dulebohn, 2002). To the extent
that an IT worker’s preference for risk and reward is
consonant with that offered by the organization – as
suggested by considerable prior research (e.g.,
O’Reilly et al., 1991; Cable & Judge, 1996) – this
should result in a lower turnover intention. The
underlying causal mechanism is one of greater job
satisfaction and organizational commitment (Hom &
Griffeth, 1995): when workers view their preferences
as congruent with the situation, they develop stronger
affective commitment (Meyer et al., 2002) and are
less likely to exhibit withdrawal behaviors such as
turnover. These arguments suggest the following
hypothesis:
H1a: Situational risk has a positive relationship
with turnover intention.
H1b: Preferred risk moderates the relationship
between situational risk and turnover intention;
the relationship becomes less positive as
preferred risk increases.
13 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
Situational Variety
While evaluating employment opportunities, a second
dimension that IT professionals are likely to consider
is the range of technologies and experiences that are
potentially available in an organization, i.e., the variety
of opportunities available with a given employer.
Agarwal and Ferratt’s (1999) field research across a
large number of organizations underscored the
importance of interesting work as an important
predictor of intentions to stay. Indeed, surveys of
“Best places to work” in information systems (Brandel,
2006) consistently point to the nature of the work
(e.g., leading-edge technologies, interesting projects)
as a significant driver of IT professionals’ attitudes
and work behaviors.
Organizations exhibit significant diversity in the types
of information technologies they utilize and in the
complexity and variety of their business processes.
Some firms choose to standardize technology
platforms and use a small number of technologies to
support all activities, while others run applications on
multiple platforms. Some organizations are
characterized as laggards or traditional IT shops in
that their information technology has not been
refreshed for several years, whereas others prefer to
stay closer to the leading edge and are constantly
updating their technology base. Likewise, the extent
of infusion of information technology across different
processes within a business can vary considerably,
as can the complexity of a firm’s business processes.
Some organizations may choose to utilize IT purely in
a utility mode, e.g., for automating back-office
operations, while for others IT is a source of
competitive advantage and permeates every
business process within the company (Applegate et
al., 2003). Organizations can have a single strategic
mission and offer a limited range of products and
services, or they may be diversified with a broad
range of market offerings. Finally, there is
considerable variance in the types of job rotation and
other development practices adopted by IT
organizations (Agarwal & Ferratt, 1999).
Each of these environments represents a very
different set of work opportunities and experiences for
an IT worker. For instance, in a large, global
organization with varied IT-related activities, the
breadth and depth of experiences available to an IT
professional are likely to be considerably greater than
those available in a smaller, narrowly focused
organization. Staying in the former type of
organization provides potential opportunities to
acquire a diversity of IT skills through a broad range
of experiences. Or it could be argued that IT
professionals in smaller organizations are required to
perform a variety of different tasks because of the IT
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
human capital constraints the organization faces.
Thus, “situations” encountered by IT workers exhibit
considerable variance in the level of variety offered.
We would expect variety to be negatively associated
with turnover intention in that higher levels of variety
will likely imbue the IT job with greater significance
and challenge; the associated intrinsic rewards
should lead to lower turnover intention. However, the
notion that individuals vary in their variety-seeking
behaviors is echoed in a significant body of consumer
behavior research (e.g., Ratner & Kahn, 2002; Inman,
2001; Trivedi, 1999). Given that innate preferences
for variety vary, these preferences are likely to
moderate the effects of variety on turnover intention.
Theoretically, the mechanism causing this interaction
is similar to that discussed above for risk, and
reflected in the notion of P-O fit (e.g., Kristof, 1996).
More specifically, a match between preferences for
variety and opportunities for variety should result in
more positive outcomes. Thus, we propose the
following hypotheses:
H2a: Situational variety has a negative
relationship with turnover intention.
H2b: Preferred variety moderates the relationship
between situational variety and turnover intention;
the relationship becomes more negative as
preferred variety increases.
Methodology
Sample
Information systems majors about to graduate and
accept employment constitute the subject pool. This
choice of subjects limits the population to new college
graduate entrants to the IT workforce. This
population, however, is important for those
organizations that renew their IT workforce through
college recruiting. In addition, this population makes
this study relevant for the job search and choice
decisions made by a large number of individuals
about to enter the IT profession. Voluntary
participants consist of 63 senior management
information systems (MIS) majors at two U.S.
universities (35 at a private midwestern university and
28 at a public eastern university). Characteristics of
the sample, including demographics and the various
measures described below, are shown in Table 1. Of
the 63 subjects, 43 (68%) report some work
experience in IT, with 39 indicating more than one
year. We conclude that the subjects are not naïve
about work environments and can make well-formed
judgments about different employment situations.
14 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
 Private Midwestern Public Eastern Combined
Variables University Sample University Sample Samples
Mean S.D. N Mean S.D. N Mean S.D. N
Demographics++
Gender (0=woman, 1=man)* .74 .44 35 .44 .51 27 .61 .49 62
+
Ethnicity See below 35 See below# 28 See below +#
63
Years until Retirement 40.2 11.5 35 39.9 7.2 21 40.1 10.0 56
Individual Measures
Propensity to Stay 4.1 1.2 35 4.5 1.2 28 4.3 1.2 63
(Number of years to stay) 5.9 5.6 35 6.3 5.5 27 6.1 5.5 62
Preferred Risk 2.4 1.1 35 2.7 1.5 28 2.5 1.3 63
Preferred Variety 5.5 1.3 35 5.3 1.5 28 5.4 1.4 63
Situational Measures by Scenario
Scenario: Low Risk, Low Variety
Turnover Intention 4.4 1.0 34 4.4 1.3 28 4.4 1.1 62
(Number of years to stay) 3.5 1.8 34 4.1 3.2 28 3.8 2.5 62
Scenario: Low Risk, High Variety
Turnover Intention 3.4 0.9 35 3.0 1.3 27 3.2 1.1 62
(Number of years to stay) 6.2 4.1 35 9.3 11.1 26 7.6 7.9 61
Scenario: High Risk, Low Variety
Turnover Intention 5.4 1.0 35 5.1 1.3 28 5.3 1.1 63
(Number of years to stay) 1.8 1.0 35 2.6 2.4 28 2.2 1.8 63
Scenario: High Risk, High Variety
Turnover Intention 5.0 1.1 34 4.8 1.1 28 4.9 1.1 62
(Number of years to stay) 2.8 1.9 34 3.5 2.3 28 3.1 2.1 62
* p < .05; (Means of the two samples are not significantly different except as noted with *)
++
43 subjects (68%) report some prior work experience in IT. Of these, 39 report at least one year.
+
86% (30) White, 6% (2) Asian, 3% (1) Hispanic, 3% (1) Black/African American, 3% (1) Other
#
32% (9) White, 54% (15) Asian, 7% (2) Hispanic, 4% (1) Black/African American, 4% (1) Other

Table 1. Sample Characteristics

Measures • What is the length of time you would prefer to

Propensity to Stay. The measure for propensity to
stay is taken from Agarwal et al. (2002), but is
anchored to the context of an ideal employer.
Participants are instructed: “Think about the type of
organization for which you would prefer to work.”
They answer four questions related to how long they
are likely to stay with this organization. Three
questions are on a seven-point Likert scale, where 1
is strongly disagree and 7 is strongly agree:
• My preference would be to stay with this
organization for a long period of time.
• I would most likely quit this organization within a
year.
• I would most likely quit this organization within
three years.
The second and third questions are reverse scored.
The fourth question is the following:
stay with this organization at this stage of your
career? _________ years
• This question is used with the following
demographic question to obtain the fourth item
in the measure:
• Approximately how many years do you have
until retirement? _________ years
The fourth item is the ratio of these last two
questions (constrained to a maximum of 1),
converted to a seven-point scale (by multiplying by
six and adding 1). Propensity to stay is the mean of
these four items.
Turnover Intention. For each of the scenarios in the
experiment (see Procedures below), participants are
instructed in Section 1 of the scenario to assume that
they have just been hired by an organization with the
risk and variety profile described in the scenario (see
Appendix A for a sample scenario). They are then
instructed as follows: “Think about the organization
that has just hired you (see Section 1 above) in

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 15 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
comparison with the type of organization for which
you would prefer to work. Assume that this
organization (i.e., the one that has just hired you) is
similar to your preferred type of organization on all
characteristics not included in the profile described
above. Given all those characteristics and the ones
described in the above profile for the organization that
has just hired you, respond to each of the following
statements by circling a number that best represents
your degree of agreement or disagreement with each
statement.” The same four questions used to
measure propensity to stay are used to ask
respondents how long they are likely to stay with the
organization described in the profile. The
demographic on years until retirement is used
similarly to obtain the fourth item. The mean of the
four items, scored in the same manner as propensity
to stay, is reverse scored to obtain the measure of
turnover intention. Each participant has a measure of
turnover intention for each of the four specific
organizational risk and variety profiles.
Preferred Risk and Variety. The individual measures
of preferred risk and variety use the same instructions
as those used for propensity to stay: “Think about the
type of organization for which you would prefer to
work.” Preferred risk is measured by the mean of the
following three items (reverse scored) on a seven-
point Likert scale, where 1 is strongly disagree and 7
is strongly agree:
• This organization provides stable, guaranteed
work and income.
• A job with this organization would be fairly
secure.
• The risks associated with this organization are
low.
Preferred variety is measured by the mean of the
following three items on a seven-point Likert scale,
where 1 is strongly disagree and 7 is strongly agree:
• I could obtain a wide variety of experience with
IT in this organization.
• I could move among many different types of jobs
in IT in this organization.
• I could develop many different skills related to a
career in IT in this organization.
Situational (i.e., Organizational) Risk and Variety.
Each scenario of the experiment consists of an
organization with a specified risk and variety profile.
The profile is presented via semantic differential type
scales, as in Agarwal et al. (2002). For an example,
see Appendix A which presents a low risk, high
variety profile. The first five items in the profile –
financial stability, guaranteed income, job security,
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
guaranteed work, and overall financial and
employment risk – represent risk items.
Organizational risk has generally been measured as
some type of variance in return on assets and return
on equity (e.g., Miller & Reuer, 1996) and, to the best
of our knowledge, there are no scale-based measures
of organizational risk in the extant literature. Therefore
we based the operational measure of risk on
considerable work in labor economics that identifies
compensation and employment as the two major
sources of risk that employees face (Turner, 2001;
Berloffa & Simmons, 2003).
The last five items – technologies involved in work,
skills developed, opportunity to move among different
IT jobs internally, experience gained by working on
projects, and organization size – represent variety.
Given the lack of existing scales for measuring
organizational variety, we constructed these items
(also used in Agarwal et al., 2002) based on the
conceptual definition of variety as the opportunities
available in an organization for a range of different
work experiences and associated skill development.
A low risk (or variety) profile has an X placed on the
7-point scale for each risk item at a value of 2. A high
risk (or variety) profile has an X placed at 6.
Procedures
This study is based on an experiment with
individuals preparing for entry into an IT career. The
specific employment context was controlled by
experimental manipulation of the two situational
factors in Figure 1. Specifically, situational (i.e.,
organizational) risk and variety were manipulated by
randomly presenting each participant with scenarios
describing organizations with specific risk and
variety profiles as described below. Participants
were instructed to assume that they had just been
hired by the organization in a scenario. Participants
answered turnover intention questions focused on
how long they would expect to be employed with an
organization having the profile of characteristics
identified in a scenario. This experimental design
allows us to have various combinations of high and
low organizational characteristics for hypothesis
testing. Such a within-subjects design that permits
the assessment of the relative attractiveness of
different organizational environments is typically
referred to as a policy capturing study (Judge &
Bretz, 1992; Bretz & Judge, 1994).
The data for this study are obtained at two points in
time. In the initial time period (called the baseline),
participants answer questions on individual factors
and demographics. Relative to Figure 1, they answer
questions on their propensity to stay with an
organization for which they would prefer to work; they
16 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
also answer questions on their preferred risk and
variety.
At a later time (approximately 3 weeks after the
baseline measurement), they are given four scenarios
corresponding to four types of organizations that have
one of the following profiles for situational risk and
variety: (1) low risk, low variety, (2) low risk, high
variety, (3) high risk, low variety, and (4) high risk,
high variety. In all other respects, the organizations in
each scenario are similar to their preferred employer.
The scenarios and related questions are presented in
random sequence, one right after another, in a single
sitting.
For the last of the four scenarios, participants answer
questions about the risk and variety that they perceive
as being associated with the organization presented
in that scenario to allow a manipulation check for risk
and variety. If the manipulation is working as
expected, subject responses to the risk and variety
they perceive in the scenario should match the risk
and variety assigned in the scenario description. The
questions used are the same as those used for
measuring preferred risk and variety, but the referent
organization is the one in the scenario rather than the
ideal employer. These questions were not used after
each scenario to limit the amount of time required for
the experiment and to limit participant fatigue and
monotony. Since the scenarios are in random
sequence, the manipulation check covers the range
of situations.
Statistical Analysis
Prior to the analyses for testing hypotheses, various
scale analyses are conducted to ascertain
Std.
Mean Deviation Turnover Propensity
Intention
Turnover Intention2 4.5 1.5
Propensity to Stay4 4.3 1.2
Preferred Risk4 2.5 1.3
Preferred Variety4 5.4 1.4
Situational Risk5 4.0 2.0
Situational Variety5 4.0 2.0
Notes: * p ≤ .05; ** p ≤ .01; *** p ≤ .001
1. N = 63 for all means, standard deviations, and correlations except for those involving turnover intention, where N = 62.
2. Measured for each scenario. The data reported here are based on the second scenario presented to each participant. Since
scenarios were presented in a random sequence, all situational risk and variety conditions are represented in the data presented
here.
3. Coefficient of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) reported on the diagonal.
4. Measured at the baseline.
5. Experimentally assigned.
Table 2. Scale Analyses1
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
psychometric properties. Cronbach alpha reliability
coefficients for the scales used in this study are all
greater than .70 as shown in Table 2. These
coefficients indicate that all scales have adequate
internal consistency. Moreover, the situational risk
and variety scales are significantly correlated with
turnover intentions in a manner consistent with
theoretical expectations (negative for situational
variety and positive for risk), attesting to the predictive
validity of the measures. Factor analysis of the items
comprising the measures completed by participants –
propensity to stay, preferred risk, preferred variety,
and turnover intention – shows that these expected
factors cleanly emerge with eigenvalues greater than
1 and appropriately high item loadings on the a priori
factors for each measure (all greater than .60) and no
high cross loadings (none greater than .40). Even
though the same items are used to measure
propensity to stay and turnover intention, the referents
(i.e., preferred organization vs. organization with a
specific risk and variety profile) are different. Indeed,
the factor analyses demonstrate that these and the
other scales have discriminant and convergent
validity (See Appendix B).
A series of linear mixed effects models are used to
test the hypotheses. Such models are particularly
suited to the analysis of data that involves repeated
measurements for different treatments on the same
subject, as is the case in this experiment (McCulloch
& Searle, 2001). This modeling technique specifically
accounts for correlations between the repeated
measures. In all models, individuals with nested risk
by variety treatment sequences are specified as
random effects and all other variables included in the
model are specified as fixed effects.
Correlations
Preferred Preferred Situational Situational
to Stay Risk Variety Risk Variety
0.853
-.16 0.73
.11 -.36** 0.84
-.04 .43** -.47** 0.87
.47** .06 .14 -.22 --
-.25* .20 -.16 .06 -.02 --
17 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
In the first stage of analysis, propensity to stay is used
in the model as a control variable. For hypothesis 1,
situational variety, preferred variety, and their
interaction are also used as control variables in the
first stage. Situational risk is added to the model in the
second stage of analysis to assess its relationship
with turnover intention after controlling for the non-risk
related variables in Figure 1. Hypothesis 1a is tested
by examining the change in information criteria
between the estimated models from the first and
second stages. If the model with situational risk fits
the data better than the model without it, the
information criteria should decrease in value from
stage one to stage two. In addition, the sign of the
situational risk coefficient is examined to determine if
it is consistent with the hypothesis. For example,
given that situational risk is a categorical variable (i.e.,
2 = low risk and 6 = high risk), one category will serve
as the base condition. If the high risk situation is the
base condition against which low risk is compared in
the statistical analysis, the low risk situation
coefficient must be significant and negative to be
consistent with the hypothesis, i.e., to show that lower
situational risk is associated with lower turnover
intention.
Preferred risk and the interaction of preferred risk and
situational risk are added to the model in the third
stage of analysis. Hypothesis 1b is tested by
examining the change in information criteria between
the estimated models from the second and third
stages. If the model with the moderating effects of
individual characteristics fit the data better than the
model without moderation, the information criteria
should decrease in value from stage two to stage
three. In addition, the sign of the coefficient for the
interaction of preferred and situational risk is
examined to determine if it is consistent with the
hypothesis. Continuing with the example from above,
the coefficient in that case must be significant and
Hypothesis 1
ModelÎ Controls
-2 Restricted Log Likelihood 824.1
Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) 828.1
Bozdogan’s Criterion (CAIC) 837.0
Hypothesis 2
ModelÎ Controls
Situational Variety
-2 Restricted Log Likelihood 774.1
Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) 778.1
Bozdogan’s Criterion (CAIC) 787.1
Table 3. Information Criteria for Hypothesis Tests
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
positive to be consistent with the hypothesis, i.e., to
show that for lower risk situations turnover intention
increases as preferred risk increases. A similar
analytic approach is used to test hypotheses 2a and
2b.
Results
Manipulation Check
For the experimental scenario presented fourth to
each participant (see Procedures), the absolute
difference between the assigned and perceived
values of both risk and variety (which are both on 7-
point scales) is not significantly different from 1.0.
Since the assigned values are either 2 (to represent
low risk or low variety) or 6 (to represent high risk or
high variety), perceived values within 1.0 of the
assigned values indicate that the perceived values of
risk and variety are consistent with the assigned
values. Thus, the experimental procedure
demonstrates internal validity.
Hypothesis Tests
H1a asserts that situational risk has a positive
relationship with turnover intention. As shown in Table
3, after controlling for the effects of propensity to stay
(plus the other variables in the model not related to
hypothesis 1), the introduction of situational risk yields
a decrease in the information criteria (e.g., AIC
decreases from 828.1 to 756.5). The F statistic for
situational risk is 89.1 with a significance of .000.
Given that the high risk situation is the base condition
against which low risk is compared in the statistical
analysis, the low risk situation coefficient must be
significant and negative to be consistent with the
hypothesis.
Controls + Controls + Situational and Preferred
Situational Risk Risk and their Interaction
752.5 750.7
756.5 754.7
765.4 763.6
Controls + Controls + Situational and Preferred
Variety and their Interaction
747.1 750.7
751.1 754.7
760.0 763.6
18 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
Its value is -1.315 with a standard error of .139, a t-
value of -9.441, degrees of freedom of approximately
180, and significance of .000 (see Appendix C). Thus,
H1a is supported, i.e., individuals who perceive the
organization to be high risk have greater turnover
intentions.
H1b asserts that the positive relationship between
situational risk and turnover intention becomes less
positive as preferred risk increases. In other words,
for higher risk situations individuals with higher
preferred risk should have lower turnover intention
than individuals with lower preferred risk; for lower
risk situations, individuals with higher preferred risk
should have higher turnover intentions. The addition
of preferred risk as a moderator yields a further
decrease in the information criteria (e.g., AIC
decreases from 756.5 to 754.7 in Table 3). The F
statistic for the interaction of preferred and situational
risk is 8.1 with a significance of .005. As above, the
high risk situation is the base condition against which
low risk is compared in the statistical analysis; thus,
the coefficient for the interaction between preferred
and situational risk must be significant and positive to
be consistent with the hypothesis. The interaction
coefficient is .296 with a standard error of .104, a t-
value of 2.853, and significance of .005 (see
Appendix C). These findings indicate that H1b is
supported. The interaction between preferred and
situational risk is graphically illustrated in Figure 2.
Moderating Effect of Preferred Risk
7.0
Turnover Intention
6.0 High Preferred
Risk
Moderate
5.0
Preferred Risk
Low Preferred
4.0 Risk
3.0
Lo Hi
Organizational Risk
Figure 2. Moderating Effect of Preferred Risk
H2a asserts that situational variety has a negative
relationship with turnover intention. As shown in Table
3, after controlling for the effects of propensity to stay
(plus the other variables in the model not related to
hypothesis 2), the introduction of situational variety
yields a decrease in the information criteria (e.g., AIC
decreases from 778.1 to 751.1). The F statistic for
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
situational variety is 31.5 with a significance of .000.
Given that the high variety situation is the base
condition against which low variety is compared in the
statistical analysis, the low variety situation coefficient
must be significant and positive to be consistent with
the hypothesis, i.e., to show that lower situational
variety is associated with higher turnover intention. Its
value is .768 with a standard error of .137, a t-value of
5.611, and significance of .000 (see Appendix C).
Thus, H2a is supported.
H2b posits that the negative relationship between
situational variety and turnover intention becomes
more negative as preferred variety increases. In other
words, for higher variety situations, individuals with
higher preferred variety should have lower turnover
intention than individuals with lower preferred variety;
for lower variety situations, individuals with higher
preferred variety should have higher turnover
intentions. The addition of preferred variety as a
moderator does not yield a further decrease in the
information criteria (e.g., AIC increases from 751.1 to
754.7 in Table 3). The F statistic for the interaction of
preferred and situational variety is 1.822 with a
significance of .179. Thus, H2b is not supported;
however, the sign of the coefficient is in the direction
hypothesized. As above, the high variety situation is
the base condition against which low variety is
compared in the statistical analysis; thus, the
coefficient for the interaction between preferred and
situational variety must be significant and positive to
be consistent with the hypothesis, i.e., to show that for
lower variety situations turnover intention increases
as preferred variety increases. The interaction
coefficient is .135 (see Appendix C). Figure 3
provides a visual plot of the interaction of situational
and preferred variety.
Moderating Effect of Preferred
Variety
6.0
High Preferred
Variety
Turnover Intention
5.0
Moderate
Preferred
Variety
4.0
Low Preferred
Variety
3.0
Lo Hi
Organizational Variety
Figure 3. Moderating Effect of Preferred Variety
19 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
Limitations
The results from this study must be interpreted in
light of four limitations that future studies could be
designed to address. First, the sample is not a large
random sample of new entrants to the IT workforce.
Nevertheless, the results are strong enough with this
sample to suggest that studies with additional
samples would be appropriate to assess how
generalizable the results are. Second, the scenarios
represent a broad range of potential employers, but
the distribution of actual employers with the range of
risk and variety represented in the experimental
situations is unknown. To understand how
generalizable our results are to actual employers of
IT professionals, future studies could include
assessments of the risk and variety of actual
employers. Of course, as with any study based on
simulated situations, field studies are needed to
support the generalizability of the results to real
situations. Third, although we experimentally
controlled the situational data, the data for the
individual variables – propensity stay, preferred risk,
preferred variety, and turnover intention – were
collected from a single source. We did collect data
for propensity to stay, preferred risk, and preferred
variety after the survey and with alternative
measures. Similar results were obtained, indicating
that the results are fairly robust with regard to
instruments. Finally, this study focused on
understanding turnover intentions. Turnover
intentions do not necessarily lead to actual turnover.
It would be informative to study how the variables
studied in this research on new IT workforce
entrants are related to actual turnover.
Discussion and Conclusion
Our goal in this paper is to understand the role of a
parsimonious set of two individual and situational
characteristics expected to be important to IT
professionals, viz., risk and variety, on the turnover
intentions of IT workers who are entering the IT
workforce. By using an experimental research design,
we are able to examine the interactions between
these factors across a range of organizational
situations. We find that organizational risk interacts
with individual preferences for risk in explaining
turnover intentions, while organizational variety
exhibits a main effect on turnover intentions with no
interaction with individual preferences for variety.
Thus, the former result supports the interactionist
perspective, while the latter questions its basic
premise. The findings yield several implications for
practice and research that are elaborated upon
below.
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
For IT managers, our conceptual model (Figure 1)
helps direct their attention toward practices affecting
perceptions of the situation (risk and variety) and our
empirical findings reinforce the importance of
individual and situational factors. It also helps direct
them to think of practices affecting the types of
individuals their organization recruits, selects, and
retains since individual characteristics moderate the
effect of the situation on turnover intention,
particularly when considering risk preferences (H1b).
Finally, our results suggest that the effects of
organizational practices, whether directed at affecting
perceptions of the situation or affecting the types of IT
professionals the organization employs, will affect
turnover intention through the interaction of the
situation and individual characteristics, particularly
when considering risk.
For prospective employers of IT professionals, our
results have important implications for how they
position themselves to potential new hires. Individuals
form assessments of organizational characteristics at
the stage of organizational entry by processing and
synthesizing information from multiple sources.
Organizations reveal information about themselves
through a variety of mechanisms, both purposely and
inadvertently. For instance, they may develop
promotional materials that are distributed to potential
applicants. For college recruiting, organizational
representatives often host information sessions on
campus. As discussed extensively in the realistic job
preview literature (e.g., Phillips, 1998), the more
accurate this information is, the greater is the
likelihood of achieving organizational effectiveness
through outcomes such as job satisfaction,
organizational commitment, and job performance. A
wide variety of organizational data is also accessible
to the discerning job seeker through, for example,
publicly available corporate documents such as
annual reports and press coverage of significant
organizational events. Another important source of
information over which organizations have less
control is current and former employees; often the
testimonials and experiences of these workers offer
new applicants a richer and more contextualized view
of organizational life. Together, these multiple sources
of information help shape the applicant’s opinion
about specific characteristics of the organization. The
implication of this study for prospective employers of
IT professionals then is that risk and variety are
powerful, parsimonious characteristics of the
employment context, and realistic pictures of these
situational characteristics should be emphasized
through such channels.
Several areas for future research arise from this
study. Six such areas are discussed next. First, even
though risk and variety are important predictors of
20 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
turnover intentions, additional potentially powerful fit
characteristics could be identified and investigated.
Some of the characteristics in O’Reilly et al.’s (1991)
OCP might arguably be correlated with risk and
variety. For instance, items related to innovation,
experimenting, risk-taking, security, and stability all
load on the individual factor of “innovation” and are
similar to the notion of risk described here. Likewise,
items tapping into opportunities and professional
growth, which loaded on different factors in the OCP
(aggressiveness and emphasis on rewards,
respectively), are reflective of our notion of variety.
Although the explanatory power of the OCP is limited,
the other values measured in the OCP may suggest
additional potentially relevant fit characteristics.
Second, there are several ways in which the
experiment described here can be extended and
enriched. For instance, we assumed that risk and
variety are important individual and situational
characteristics and, with a goal of parsimony,
included only these two factors. An alternative
approach, in the spirit of the P-O fit literature (Kristof,
1996), would be to elicit the importance of different
job and organization characteristics from individuals
prior to presenting the organizational scenarios. Such
a strategy could help alleviate the potential for social
desirability bias in the responses (e.g., a preference
for variety is generally considered good) and also
provide insights into additional factors that should be
included in the model. Further, we chose risk and
variety as two factors that drive the turnover intentions
of new entrants. It may well be the case that for
individuals who are already in an employment
situation, factors other than risk and variety are more
salient to determining their turnover intentions. This
possibility can be investigated in future research.
A third avenue for future research is to examine the
antecedents of individual preferences. Much research
asserts that individual preferences for situational
factors are driven by their personal characteristics
(Judge & Cable, 1997; Kristof, 1996; Kristof-Brown,
2000). In other words, what an individual seeks in an
employment relationship is a function of some
attributes that characterize the job seeker. Therefore,
in light of our findings regarding risk, it would be
fruitful to examine what the drivers of risk preferences
are. Given our focus on IT workers, one important
driver of risk preferences may be the competency
bundle the IT worker perceives himself or herself as
possessing, characterized in terms of the value of the
knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) possessed and
the performance level at which they are exhibited.
Competencies are one instantiation of the general
KSA construct prevalent in the job choice and
employment behavior literature.
The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems
The need to include competencies in a model of IT
employment behavior is evident when one considers
the rapid pace of technological change in IT, along
with variations in demand, supply, and market value
of various competencies. On the one hand, technical
skills decay rapidly as technologies change, and the
new competence-destroying technologies often have
limited lives, suggesting that the competencies of IT
professionals erode rather than increase over time.
On the other hand, IT organizations often need IT
professionals with managerial and business skills that
arguably increase in value with experience, in
general, and perhaps even more with firm-specific
experience. In addition, the organization’s need for IT
professionals with specific competencies may be high
for a limited period of time, which may coincide with a
labor market that has a particularly acute undersupply
of those competencies. Furthermore, IT workers may
choose to develop a variety of different competencies.
For instance, they may focus on generic skills or on
firm-specific skills (Becker, 1983). Generic skills are
those that can be traded in the open labor market and
that are equally valuable to all employers. By contrast,
firm-specific skills, which include deep knowledge of
the firm’s context, social networks and relationships
developed within the firm, and an understanding of
firm culture, may be of limited value to competing
employers.
Fourth, our study was conducted in the 2001-2002
time frame after the dot-com bubble was already in
decline and there was a purported excess supply of
IT labor in the market. We anchored our
measurement of preferred risk and variety on the
characteristics of an “ideal” employer. It is possible
that the profile of such an ideal employer may be
affected by the labor market situation and other
environmental factors. Future research could theorize
about and test the effects of such factors on IT
professionals’ ideal employers.
It would also be interesting to examine if risk and
variety are important in explaining turnover intention
in IT professionals other than new entrants or in
occupational groups that are relatively more stable
and less entrepreneurial than the IT profession, such
as retail banking. Our sample is limited to new
entrants to the IT profession, and our hypothesis that
the person-situation interaction on the dimensions of
risk and variety would be significantly associated with
turnover intention is predicated on idiosyncratic
characteristics of the IT profession. Confirming these
relationships with established IT professionals, e.g.,
those in the later career stages studied by Hsu et al.
(2003), and examining them with other professions
would be interesting directions for future research.
21 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
Finally, the finding that the individual characteristic of
preferred risk moderates the effects of situational risk
but that the individual characteristic of preferred
variety does not moderate the effects of situational
variety suggests that some situational characteristics
dominate individual characteristics while others do
not. Since these findings both confirm and question
the basic premise of the interactionist perspective, it
would be helpful to understand better the situational
or individual characteristics that yield such results.
Future research in this area could extend prior work
on strong situations and individual differences that
matter (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; Mischel, 1977; 1997).
In conclusion, this study makes substantive and
methodological contributions to the interactionist
perspective on understanding turnover intentions of IT
professionals, particularly new entrants who have
been neglected in prior research on turnover
intentions. We have argued that risk and variety are
parsimonious, important situational and individual
characteristics predicting turnover intentions among
these new entrants to the high-tech profession and
found that these two characteristics have strong
explanatory power in a simulated environment. In
addition, our experimental scenarios provide an
example of a methodological approach for examining
individual-situational interactions across a broad
range of organizational settings. Finally, our scales for
the fit characteristics of risk and variety provide a
measurement foundation upon which future research
can build.
References
Agarwal, R., De, P., and Ferratt, T.W. (2001). “How
Long Will They Stay? Predicting an IT
Professional’s Preferred Employment Duration,”
Proceedings of the 2001 ACM Special Interest
Group on Computer Personnel Research
Conference (SIG CPR), San Diego, CA, pp.
132-138.
Agarwal, R., De, P., and Ferratt, T.W. (2002).
“Explaining an IT Professional’s Preferred
Employment Duration: Empirical Tests of a
Causal Model of Antecedents,” Proceedings of
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24 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
About the Authors
Ritu Agarwal is Professor and Robert H. Smith
Dean’s Chair of Information Systems at the Smith
School of Business, University of Maryland. She is
also the Director of the Center for Health Information
and Decision Systems. Professor Agarwal is
currently a Senior Editor at Information Systems
Research. She has published in MISQ, ISR,
Management Science, IEEE Transactions, JMIS,
and other journals.
Thomas W. Ferratt is Sherman-Standard Register
Professor of MIS at the University of Dayton. His
work appears in ISR, MISQ, JMIS, Academy of
Management Journal, and others. Besides being an
SE here, he is an AE at ISR. He served as Chair of
the Special Interest Group on Computer Personnel
Research (SIGCPR) before its merger with ACM
SIGMIS.
Prabuddha De (Ph.D., Carnegie-Mellon University)
is Accenture Professor of IT at Purdue University.
He has published in Management Science,
Operations Research, ISR, MISQ, and other
journals. He serves or earlier served on the Editorial
Boards of Management Science, ISR, JMIS, and
DSS, among others. He was Doctoral Consortium
Co-Chair for ICIS’2006, Program Chair for
ICIS’1999, and Workshop Co-Chair for WITS’1994.

Appendix A: Organization Profile

Section 1. Assume you have just taken a job with an organization that has the following profile. Think about this
organization in comparison with the type of organization for which you would prefer to work. Assume that the
organization described in the profile below is similar to your preferred type of organization on all characteristics
not included in the profile described below. Each X represents where the organization that has just hired you lies
on a 7-point linear scale. The two extremes of each 7-point scale are described, more or less, by the words at the
opposite ends of the scale. Thus, each X is closer to the words most descriptive of the organization that just hired
you.
Profile
Organization value may vary widely over
Organization is financially stable |------X------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
time
Personal financial gains or losses vary
Income, benefits, and retirement are
|------X------|-------|-------|-------|-------| considerably with organization’s
guaranteed
performance
Future employment depends on
Job security is high |------X------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
organization’s performance
Work is guaranteed |------X------|-------|-------|-------|-------| Work load is driven by market demand
Financial and employment risks
Financial and employment risks
associated with this organization are |------X------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
associated with this organization are high
low
Work involves a few selected Work involves a wide variety of
|-------|-------|-------|-------|------X------|
technologies technologies
High skill levels are developed in a
|-------|-------|-------|-------|------X------| Many different skills are developed
limited number of areas
Opportunity for IT job movement
Opportunity to move among many
internally is limited by the size of |-------|-------|-------|-------|------X------|
different IT jobs internally is high
organization
IT experience is gained by working on IT experience is gained by working on a
|-------|-------|-------|-------|------X------|
similar projects over time variety of different projects over time
Organization is small |-------|-------|-------|-------|------X------| Organization is large

* This appendix shows a portion of the instrument used during the experiment.

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 25 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
Appendix B: Rotated Component Matrix for Items Measuring Individual Characteristicsa

Component
1 2 3 4
b
Turnover intention-quit 3 years-specific-reverse .896
Turnover intention-quit 1 year-specific-reverseb .851
b
Turnover intention-stay long time-specific .855
b
Turnover intention-years/yrs_until_retire-specific-7points .712
Preferred variety-move among IT jobs-baseline .855
Preferred variety-experience with IT-baseline .834
Preferred variety-develop many different skills-baseline .817
Preferred risk-risks low-baseline-reverse .877
Preferred risk-secure job-baseline-reverse .850
Preferred risk-stable, guaranteed work, income-baseline-reverse .788
Propensity to stay-long time-baseline .768
Propensity to stay-quit 3 years-baseline-reverse .686
Propensity to stay-quit 1 year-baseline-reverse .636
Propensity to stay-years/yrs_until_retire-baseline-7points .630

a
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
Loadings < .40 not shown. These results were obtained with 54 observations for the second experimental
situation. Substantially similar results were obtained for separate factor analysis of the observations on
turnover intention in each experimental situation and the baseline observations on the other measures.
b
Turnover intention items are scored in the same direction as the propensity to stay items for this analysis.

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 26 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
 Appendix C: Estimates of Fixed Effects a

H1a Test
Parameter Estimate Std. Error df t Sig.
Intercept 5.709 .451 147.056 12.666 .000
[Situational Variety=2.00] .039 .567 179.455 .069 .945
[Situational Variety=6.00] 0(a) 0 . . .
[Situational Risk=2.00] -1.315 .139 179.695 -9.441 .000
[Situational Risk=6.00] b
0 0 . . .
Preferred Variety -.008 .082 138.459 -.096 .923
Propensity to stay -.225 .071 58.110 -3.157 .003
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=2.00]) .136 .102 179.392 1.325 .187
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=6.00]) b
0 0 . . .

H1b Test
Parameter Estimate Std. Error df t Sig.
Intercept 6.024 .596 104.638 10.104 .000
[Situational Variety=2.00] .041 .556 178.432 .073 .942
[Situational Variety=6.00] b
0 0 . . .
[Situational Risk=2.00] -2.066 .296 178.558 -6.970 .000
[Situational Risk=6.00] b
0 0 . . .
Preferred Variety -.003 .086 121.301 -.038 .970
Preferred Risk -.137 .086 128.555 -1.603 .111
Propensity to stay -.222 .073 57.061 -3.063 .003
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=2.00]) .135 .100 178.371 1.350 .179
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=6.00]) b
0 0 . . .
Preferred Risk*([Situational Risk=2.00]) .296 .104 178.396 2.853 .005

Notes:
a
Dependent variable: Turnover intention
b
This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 27 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007
 H2a Test
Parameter Estimate Std. Error df t Sig.
Intercept 5.962 .419 79.641 14.220 .000
[Situational Variety=2.00] .768 .137 179.653 5.611 .000
[Situational Variety=6.00] 0b 0 . . .
[Situational Risk=2.00] -2.065 .297 179.547 -6.953 .000
b
[Situational Risk=6.00] 0 0 . . .
Preferred Risk -.162 .081 143.189 -1.983 .049
Propensity to stay -.198 .068 57.964 -2.932 .005
Preferred Risk*([Situational Risk=2.00]) .296 .104 179.382 2.846 .005
b
Preferred Risk*([Situational Risk=6.00]) 0 0 . . .

H2b Test
Parameter Estimate Std. Error df t Sig.

Intercept 6.024 .596 104.638 10.104 .000

[Situational Variety=2.00] .041 .556 178.432 .073 .942
b
[Situational Variety=6.00] 0 0 . . .
[Situational Risk=2.00] -2.066 .296 178.558 -6.970 .000
[Situational Risk=6.00] 0b 0 . . .
Preferred Variety -.003 .086 121.301 -.038 .970
Preferred Risk -.137 .086 128.555 -1.603 .111
Propensity to stay -.222 .073 57.061 -3.063 .003
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=2.00]) .135 .100 178.371 1.350 .179
b
Preferred Variety*([Situational Variety=6.00]) 0 0 . . .
Preferred Risk*([Situational Risk=2.00]) .296 .104 178.396 2.853 .005
b
Preferred Risk*([Situational Risk=6.00]) 0 0 . . .

Notes:
a
Dependent variable: Turnover intention
b
This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems 28 Volume 38, Number 1, February 2007