Job Satisfaction and Turnover among IT Professionals: A Cognitive Dissonance Approach

Organizations are increasingly recognizing their workers as valuable resources. Therefore, workforce planning and policies that minimize the voluntary turnover of IT professionals are important. Using cognitive dissonance theory as a theoretical foundation, we propose and test research hypotheses that combine traditional voluntary turnover constructs with constructs of interest to the IT profession. Data are collected from a sample of 179 IT workers in one agency within a large multi-agency governmental organization. These initial results indicate skill-set obsolescence and fairness of rewards are direct antecedents of job satisfaction. Organizational commitment, job alternatives, and perceived workload directly impact turnover intention, but job satisfaction impacts turnover intention only when mediated by organizational commitment.