Are IT Professionals Better Off when They Return to Their Former Employer? An Employee Perspective on IT Boomerang Careers

Rehiring IT professionals is a valuable strategy to fill vacancies. While recent research has shown why IT professionals will return to a previous employer, we extend this line of inquiry to analyze whether boomerang employees who have returned to a previous employer consider their new situation better than the first time. Drawing on the job characteristics model and belief-update theory, we interviewed 39 boomerang employees working in the IT industry. The results indicate that all of them are more satisfied with their job after returning, yet for different reasons. While the majority (31 IT professionals) evaluate core job characteristics as improved after returning, others report increased job satisfaction, among others, for private reasons. Our main contribution to the growing literature on boomerang IT employees is that the grass is not always greener at other firms.

[1]  M. A. Campion,et al.  Welcome Back? Job Performance and Turnover of Boomerang Employees Compared to Internal and External Hires , 2020, Journal of Management.

[2]  J. R. Hackman,et al.  How job characteristics theory happened , 2005 .

[3]  John P. Hausknecht,et al.  One Hundred Years of Employee Turnover Theory and Research , 2017, The Journal of applied psychology.

[4]  Mike Tae-in Eom,et al.  How Can Organization Retain IT Personnel? Impact of IT Manager’s Leadership on IT Personnel’s Intention to Stay , 2015, Inf. Syst. Manag..

[5]  Waumsley Ja.  Work-life balance : a psychological perspective. , 2005 .

[6]  Stephen E. Humphrey,et al.  Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: a meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. , 2007, The Journal of applied psychology.

[7]  Robert J. House,et al.  Methodological and substantive extensions to the job characteristics model of motivation , 1980 .

[8]  Christian Maier,et al.  Overcoming pathological IT use: How and why IT addicts terminate their use of games and social media , 2020, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[9]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Social Networking Site Use Resumption: A Model of Return Migration , 2021, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[10]  Mayuram S. Krishnan,et al.  Human Capital and Institutional Effects in the Compensation of Information Technology Professionals in the United States , 2008, Manag. Sci..

[11]  Jason Bennett Thatcher,et al.  IS Employee Attitudes and Perceptions at Varying Levels of Software Process Maturity , 2012, MIS Q..

[12]  Bill C. Hardgrave,et al.  Emotional Dissonance and the Information Technology Professional , 2008, MIS Q..

[13]  Ruth N. Bolton,et al.  A Dynamic Model of the Duration of the Customer's Relationship with a Continuous Service Provider: The Role of Satisfaction , 1994 .

[14]  C. Maier,et al.  Turnback Intention: An Analysis of the Drivers of IT Professionals’ Intentions to Return to a Former Employer , 2021, MIS Quarterly.

[15]  J. Hackman,et al.  Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey , 1975 .

[16]  C. W. Younts,et al.  Justice Processes: Specifying the Mediating Role of Perceptions of Distributive Justice , 2001, American Sociological Review.

[17]  Benson Rosen,et al.  Gone Today but here Tomorrow: Extending the Unfolding Model of Turnover to Consider Boomerang Employees , 2014 .

[18]  Fred Niederman,et al.  Testing and extending the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to it professionals , 2007 .

[19]  Steven J. Lorenzet,et al.  The importance of the critical psychological states in the job characteristics model: A meta-analytic and structural equations modeling examination. , 2000 .

[20]  Suprateek Sarker,et al.  Guest editorial: qualitative studies in information systems: a critical review and some guiding principles , 2013 .

[21]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Challenge and Hindrance IS Use Stressors and Appraisals: Explaining Contrarian Associations in Post-Acceptance IS Use BehaviorChallenge and Hindrance IS Use Stressors and Appraisals: Explaining Contrarian Associations in Post-Acceptance IS Use Behavior , 2021, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[22]  Christian Maier,et al.  The direct and indirect influence of mindfulness on techno-stressors and job burnout: A quantitative study of white-collar workers , 2021, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[23]  Richard G. Gardner,et al.  Employees on the Rebound: Extending the Careers Literature to Include Boomerang Employment , 2017, The Journal of applied psychology.

[24]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Who really quits?: A longitudinal analysis of voluntary turnover among IT personnel , 2015, DATB.

[25]  Michael D. Myers,et al.  The qualitative interview in IS research: Examining the craft , 2007, Inf. Organ..

[26]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Is Information Technology Solely to Blame? The Influence of Work-home Conflict Dimensions on Work Exhaustion , 2016, ICIS.

[27]  Soon Ang,et al.  Turnover or Turnaway? Competing Risks Analysis of Male and Female IT Professionals' Job Mobility and Relative Pay Gap , 2015, Inf. Syst. Res..

[28]  Sven Laumer,et al.  The effect of personality on IT personnel’s job-related attitudes: establishing a dispositional model of turnover intention across IT job types , 2016, J. Inf. Technol..

[29]  Soon Ang,et al.  Turnover of Information Technology Professionals: A Narrative Review, Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling, and Model Development , 2007, MIS Q..

[30]  Christian Maier,et al.  Personality Profiles that Put Users at Risk of Perceiving Technostress , 2020, Business & Information Systems Engineering.

[31]  Rebecca R. Kehoe,et al.  In with the Old? Examining When Boomerang Employees Outperform New Hires , 2020 .

[32]  Jason Bennett Thatcher,et al.  The Grass is Always Greener on The Other Side: A Test of Present and Alternative Job Utility on IT Professionals’ Turnover , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[33]  R. Hogarth,et al.  Order effects in belief updating: The belief-adjustment model , 1992, Cognitive Psychology.

[34]  H. Willmott,et al.  Qualitative research in business and management , 2014 .

[35]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Information technology as daily stressor: pinning down the causes of burnout , 2015 .

[36]  Wynne W. Chin,et al.  Toward a process-based view of information technology acceptance , 2014, J. Inf. Technol..

[37]  Remus Ilies,et al.  Hostility, job attitudes, and workplace deviance: test of a multilevel model. , 2006, The Journal of applied psychology.

[38]  Jason Bennett Thatcher,et al.  Turnover of Information Technology Workers: Examining Empirically the Influence of Attitudes, Job Characteristics, and External Markets , 2002, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[39]  M. Kiggundu,et al.  A partial test and extension of the job characteristics model of motivation , 1979 .

[40]  Sven Laumer,et al.  Human resource management and its impact on strategic business-IT alignment: A literature review and avenues for future research , 2020, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[41]  Victoria Johnson,et al.  When Callings Are Calling: Crafting Work and Leisure in Pursuit of Unanswered Occupational Callings , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[42]  Sushil S. Nifadkar,et al.  Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development , 2007 .

[43]  Christian Maier,et al.  Personality within Information Systems Research: a literature Analysis , 2012, ECIS.