The I.S. profession and the I.S. professional: fit of mis-fit?

This paper reports findings from the second in a recent series of studies related to motivation and work performance. In the first study, individual need differences between IS and other professionals from the same organizations were explored in an effort to answer questions raised in prior works. Results generally suggested that IS and non-IS professionals are not, in fact, very different from one another. This result is in contrast to the Couger and Zawacki results, but provides some support for the Ferratt and Short results. Interestingly, IS participants reported significantly lower internal needs than non–IS personnel. Internal needs include motivators such as ability utilization and achievement opportunity.