Motivation and Satisafction at Work: a study of information technology professionals

This study examines the job satisfaction, motivation, pay satisfaction and performance of information technology (IT) professionals. Situated in a large organisation, this study uses expectancy theory, adapting Nadler and Lawler’s 1989 model to include pay satisfaction and measure the relationships of the aforementioned variables. IT professionals are skilled workers and belong to an industry with high turnover. Prior literature establishes the link between satisfaction and retention; therefore, developing better understanding about the factors that serve to satisfy these workers is foundational to this study. IT workers are an understudied group and yet they are a vital part of the business environment today making this study important in a practical and theoretical way. Consistent with the literature’s well replicated findings, IT professionals’ performance is positively correlated with motivation. In addition, job satisfaction is shown to be positively correlated with performance and pay satisfaction. A further analysis to determine whether pay satisfaction or performance is more strongly associated with overall job satisfaction reveals pay satisfaction to be the stronger of the two