The Relationship between Management Traits and the Commitment of IT Engineers to their Organizations

Abstract

Since the demise of the "dot-com boom", information technology (IT) engineers have been reluctant about changing jobs when these opportunities do arise. The result is unmotivated engineers reluctantly staying with their employing organizations. This paper investigates the relationship between management traits and the commitment of information technology engineers to their organizations. Fifty seven engineers participated in the study. The results showed that engineers whose managers possess high aggregate management traits display high levels of identification commitment. There was little or no relationship between aggregate management traits and compliance commitment. Respondents whose managers possess high aggregate management trait reported low intention to leave. The study also found that respondents with high levels of identification commitment have low intent to leave their respective companies, and those with high identification commitment demonstrated high levels of compliance commitment. A relationship could not be established between compliance commitment and intent to leave.