Individuality Matters: A World View of Individual Issues of IT Professionals

Individuality matters. While information technology (IT) is important, more critical for the success of IS functions in an organization are its people, their values, attitudes, norms, and behavior. There are differences among IT professionals, not only at the organizational level, but also at the global level. Using data collected from more than 10,000 IT employees in 37 countries under the World IT Project, this study examines some fundamental issues of IT workers from a global perspective. While there are differences, we find that almost universally, nine individual issues are important across many countries, and they are interrelated in a similar manner. IT employees in some countries maintain stronger social bonds among themselves than those in others, which provide them with the necessary social capital to utilize in times of high work exhaustion, environmental dynamism and insecurity, as well as their efforts to change jobs. In difficult situations, the professional self-efficacy of the workers secures them. A significant number of IT employees feel that excessive work overload upsets the balance between their lives at home and workplace demands. Nevertheless, an intellectually stimulating and well-balanced work environment ensures job satisfaction for a significant number of IT employees in many countries