Factors motivating information technology professionals to become self-employed.
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Date
2012
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Abstract
The world economy and industry in turn is driven by technology and innovation at
a rapid rate. Worldwide, the information technology (IT) industry is volatile in terms
of turnover intentions of IT professionals The unemployment level in South Africa
is high according to global standards. The option of contracting as an IT consultant
or self-employment is a form of an alternate employment arrangement. This
arrangement will benefit the unemployed in South Africa if they choose to skill
themselves and pursue a career in self-employment in the IT industry. There are
internal and external employment factors that affect an IT professional’s
employment arrangement. Moore’s (2000) information technology employee
turnover model was adapted as a basis for this research. An external factor,
entrepreneurship (self-employment) was introduced to Moore’s model. This
research also tests Moore’s (2000) model for its internal factors. The following
factors, role ambiguity, role conflict, autonomy, perceived workload, fairness of
reward, work exhaustion and entrepreneurship were formulated in the hypotheses
to determine which of these factors influences self-employment in IT professionals.
Information technology professionals based in Durban were the target
respondents in the City of Durban. The survey questionnaire was emailed to
respondents using Questionpro. The sample data was based on 123 respondents
who completed the survey. The data was then validated for internal consistency
using Cronbach alpha ratio generated by the SPSS (version 19.0) software tool.
The quantitative research design was chosen. Frequency tables and Pearson’s
bivariate correlation coefficient statistics was used in the data analysis phase. The
research objective was achieved successfully and the following factors were
determined, they are role ambiguity, role conflict, autonomy, work exhaustion and
entrepreneurship. The IT industry is volatile with IT professionals constantly re-skilling
themselves to be on par with changing technology and innovation that
make them very competent and competitive as a result, these IT professionals
create a market for self-employment.
Description
Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.
Keywords
Information technology--Job vacancies., Self-employed--Information technology--South Africa., Information technology., Motivation (Psychology), Theses--Business administration.