The Career Needs of IS Personnel: Does the Dual Career Ladder Work? STUDY HYPOTHESES

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1 The Career Needs of IS Personnel: Does the Dual Career Ladder Work? Jack J. Baroudi Graduate School of Business Administration New York University ABSTRACT This paper challenges the utility of the dual career ladder for IS personnel by exploring how well it fits their career needs. Based on data collected from two major banks, IS personnel are found to possess a diversity of career orientations. Further analysis suggests that the dual career ladder only partially satisfies the variety of career needs of IS personnel. Serious questions. regarding the effectiveness of the technical career ladder, in particular, are raised. Potential problems with the technical path are cited and recommendations for IS managers are made. 1. INTRODUCTION In today s increasingly technological society it is critical that the effectiveness of the various organizational career options for satisfying the career needs of information systems (IS) personnel be understood. Organizations that are unable to develop career paths that are satisfying to their employees will have a difficult time maintaining an adequate level of skilled employees to support the organization s operations [Hall & Associates, The need to maintain an adequate supply of skilled IS personnel goes further than the standard debate on the problems of turnover [Baroudi, 1985; Bartol, Beyond managing turnover, organizations must also make sure that they have the necessary technical and managerial expertise at the appropriate skill levels and in the appropriate numbers to keep the IS department and organization functioning. This can be a difficult balancing act and many organizations deal with this issue by offering a dual career ladder with both technical and managerial IS career paths [e.g. Delaney, in an effort to maintain an adequate supply of technical managers and experts. Given the cost and effort expended by organizations to implement dual career ladders it is important to understand how effective the career options made available actually are. As little research into this area has been conducted to date, this paper describes a study that was undertaken to answer the following question: How effective are the organizational IS career options at satisfying the career needs of IS personnel? To more precisely frame this question into testable hypotheses, section 2.0 will describe the background literature and model which guided the study. Section 3.0 will describe the research methodology, research sites, subjects and measures. Finally, the results of the hypothesis testing will be described in section 4.0. Section 5.0 will conclude the paper with a discussion of the results and make recommendations to managers and researchers based on the findings. 2. BACKGROUND LITERATURE AND STUDY HYPOTHESES In their review of the literature regarding IS careers Ginzberg and Baroudi [1987] found that the two most consistent recommendations made by the IS literature, both practitioner and academic were the need to: 1) pay more attention to career planning and 2) to implement a dual career ladder allowing either managerial or technical career options. The literature cited by Ginzberg and Baroudi [1987] is not extensive and they suggest the need to look beyond the rather limited IS careers literature into the more general organizational literature as it provides a much richer set of constructs. One of the major problems with the dual career model which is apparent when reviewing the Organizational literature is that it assumes individuals will have primary career motivations that are either TH0214-7/88/~/0171$01.~ IEEE 171

2 technical or managerial. However many other career orientations may also be possible, yet these are ignored in the dual career model. Empirical work conducted by Schein [1978] and Delong [l982] have identified eight general career anchors or orientations which exist, in general, for individuals across occupations. A career anchor refers to an individual's self-perceived talents, values, and motives which give shape to his or her career decisions. These eight different anchors include: managerial competence, technical/functional competence, security/stability, creativity/entrepreneurship, autonomy/independence, identity, service and finally variety. These are defined as follows: Managerial competence: This anchor indicates an individual's preference for the general set of activities which comprise the "idea of management." These individuals pride themselves on their ability to take on responsibility and make difficult decisions. People with this as a dominant anchor will look for career experiences that will lead to general management. Technical Competence: This anchor measures the individual's relative interest in a particular functional or technical area. In the context of IS work, individuals scoring high on this anchor want to be recognized for their technical talents and technical expertise. Security: This is divided into geographic and organizational subsets. Individuals with a geographic security anchor typically will not leave a specific geographic area and may forego promotions which would require relocation. Organizational security refers to individuals who will accept an organizational definition of their careers and who often tie their careers to a specific organization. An individual with a high organizational security score will often conform to the organization's goals in order to receive long term stability and job security. Creativity: People who score high on this anchor have a need to create something of their own. This anchor is frequently associated with entrepreneurs. These people often need to be the most central and visible people on a project. Autonomy: This anchor measures the extent to which individuals feel they are constrained by the structures of organizations. These people are usually concerned with freedom and autonomy from organizational restrictions and want the freedom to pursue what they, and not necessarily the organization, consider important. Identity: This anchor measures the extent to which an individual values being associated with a particular or prestigious organization. These individuals will often jump from job to job and firm to firm in order to work for the largest, most prestigious or visible firm. This anchor is different from organizational security as this person values prestige or visibility over stability or security. Service: Individuals who have a service orientation have a preference for helping others and are concerned with seeing others change because of their efforts. These are often associated with' the helping or consulting professions. Variety: This anchor measures the extent to which people desire variety in their tasks or jobs. People scoring high on this anchor prefer a number of different job tasks, otherwise they find that they become bored with their jobs. It is important to note that these anchors are not independent. It is quite possible, even probable for a person to score highly on several anchors. For example, an individual could have a strong desire for technical competence as well as autonomy. This person may view technical competence as one of the ways of gaining autonomy. If the anchors tend to covary strongly then various career paths may be able to meet many of the above career needs, however we have no apriori belief about how they will covary for IS personnel. Employing Schein and Delong's notion of a career anchor provides a rich model for exploring the relationships between an individual's career desires and the ability of the dual career model to meet these desires. In order to answer the question of how effective dual career paths are for IS personnel we must first understand what their career orientations or anchors are. Once this has been ascertained, a sense of how well the dual career paths meet these career desires can be examined. It is expected that IS personnel will have a number of different reasons for I72

3 choosing IS as an occupation which will be reflected in a diversity of career anchors. This leads to the first hypothesis: HI: IS personnel will exhibit a wide variety of career anchors which will not be limited to managerial or technical competence. Given that IS personnel are expected to have a wide variety of career orientations, it is also expected that the dual career path will have differential ability to meet the career needs of IS personnel. However, given that the dual career path was designed specifically to address the technical and managerial needs of the employee it is expected that the strength of the relationship between how satisfied IS personnel are with the available organizational career options (career satisfaction) and these two anchors will be the greatest. No specific a priori hypotheses regarding the relationships between career satisfaction and the other anchors is possible at this time. Therefore: H2: A strong positive relationship will exist between career satisfaction and the managerial or technical career anchors. Uncovering the answer to these two questions will provide the first empirical look at exactly what the career desires of IS personnel are and how well the common prescription of dual career paths is able to meet these desires. It may be entirely possible that many or most of our personnel have neither a technical nor a managerial interest and that, all the effort, time, and expense that organizations have incurred building these dual ladders has been wasted. 3. THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study employed a cross sectional mail survey of IS development personnel within two firms. This section will describe in detail the two companies which participated in the research study, how the survey was administered, the career paths available at the research sites, and the subject demographics. Finally a discussion of the measures used and the statistical techniques employed will be described The Research Sites The surveys were distributed to IS development personnel at two of the nations major commercial banks located in NYC. In both sites the subjects were employed by distributed data processing groups. One group was responsible for managing and supporting the proliferation of office automation technology and end user computing throughout the bank. The other group was responsible for developing and maintaining business systems for a specific business unit within the bank. The groups are similar in that they are both large, having an IS staff in excess of 100, are both identified by management and users as IS staff, and both use minicomputers. Both departments have formally developed dual IS career paths, where an individual has the option of either remaining a technical specialist or assuming managerial responsibility. The technical and managerial career paths each offer similar increases in salary and title. The more senior technical positions and the more senior managerial positions are both classified as bank officers. Becoming an officer is an important distinction for bank employees as it gives them a variety of additional benefits including more vacation time, access to the officers dining room, participation in various compensation packages and status. In both research sites the intention of the IS management was to allow an individual to choose whichever career path she or he felt was most appropriate and to have each career path provide the same rewards. In both departments, IS management has implemented extensive programs to make certain the dual career options are well communicated to their staffs The Questionnaire Administration A middle level IS manager in each organization was contacted and agreed to serve as the liaison between the researcher and the research subjects. The manager then distributed the cover letter, the questionnaire, and a pre-addressed envelope to each subject. Only the development staff in each of the sites were included. The participants were asked to complete the questionnaire anonymously, seal the questionnaire in the envelope and drop it in the mail. One hundred and fourteen IS development staff were contacted in the office automation group with fortyfour actually completing and returning the questionngre for a response rate of 38 percent. At the accounting systems site the manager was uncertain as to how many questionnaires he had distributed. He had been given 150 questionnaires, and the researcher received back 55 questionnaires for a response rate of at least 36 percent. The overall N for the study is thus subjects Subject Demographics The subjects were limited to the systems development personnel for whom the dual career paths had been developed. The job titles of those surveyed included programmers, programmer/analysts, systems analysts and project I73

4 leaders. A breakdown of the sample by job title is not provided as the researcher s contacts indicated that formal job titles such as programmer or analyst were not a good indicator of actual job responsibility. Ninety percent of those surveyed however indicated, that their position was primarily technical with little formal managerial responsibility. Table A provides a breakdown of the sample by gender, age, marital status, education, college major, and years in data processing Measures In constructing the questionnaire to test the research questions, measures with established reliability and validity were used whenever possible. All of the measures tap subjective dispositions and are at the individual level of analysis. A measure of an individual s career anchors was developed by Delong and has been shown [Delong, to possess desirable psychometric properties. Included with the instrument are instructions on how to score the various anchors and the norms for a high or low score for each anchor. Unfortunately no standard measure of individual career satisfaction exists and one had to be built. Recent work by Scarpello and Campbell [1983] in the area of job satisfaction suggests that single-item global measures are more inclusive and convenient measures of overall job satisfaction than the summation of many facets. Therefore, the measure of career satisfaction in this study was developed as a one item scale: the subject s overall satisfaction with career opportunities with his or her current employer. See table B for a copy of the scale. As the measure is a single item we have no data on its reliability. While the scale does possess strong face validity, further evidence for its validity is provided by its correlation with the job satisfaction measure. An overall measure of job satisfaction as described by Scarpello and Campbell [1983] was also collected to help validate the measure of career satisfaction and the two constructs were expected to correlate positively. The correlation was in fact an r of.52 and significant at p>.oo1. This demonstrates that the construct of satisfaction with one s career options relates as expected to a more established construct which provides some evidence of its validity [Stone, Descriptive statistics for the career anchor measures and the measure of career satisfaction are presented in table B. Sample Demographics Gender: Male Female % 34.3% ---- Marital Status: Single % Married % College Major: Computer Related % Non-computer Related % Age : Mean 31.9 Std. Dev. 6.1 Range 22 to Education: High School 2 2.0% Some College % College Grad % Post Graduate % Work -- Years in Data Processing: 7.8 Mean Std. Dev 4.8 Range 1 to 20 Table A 1 74

5 Scales and Descriptive Statistics The Career Satisfaction Measure: How satisfied are you with your career apportunities with your current employer? Very Satisfied 1 2 Mean: 2.89 The career anchor measures: Anchor : Technical Competence Managerial Competence Autonomy Security : Organizational Geographic service Identity Variety Creativity 3 4 Mean : Very Dissatisfied Std. Dev.: 1.18 Std. Dev: Theoretical Minimun: 10 Theoretical Maximum: Testing Given the similarity of the sites and the subjects, the data was combined into one sample. Before this was done separate analyses were run on each data set to see if mixing the data would bias the results. The individual analyses and results were consistent with the results for the combined data, therefore, the analysis was done on the combined data set. To determine the diversity of career anchors (hypothesis H1) standard frequencies were used. The number and percentage of subjects who scored high and low on each anchor were computed. Further, to determine the relationships among the anchors Pearson correlational analysis was used. Since no a priori relationships were hypothesized, two tailed testing at a cutoff level of.10 was employed. This secondary analysis was to determine the extent to which the career anchors were related. For example, questions such as do individuals who score high on technical competence also score high on autonomy or similar items can be answered by this analysis. Pearson correlations were also calculated between each of the career anchors and the measure of how satisfied the individuals are with their career Table B opportunities at their present employer. Again, twctailed testing was used with a cutoff level of.lo. These correlations test hypothesis H2 by determining the relationship between each of the anchors and the measure of career satisfaction. This provides an indication of how well the perceived career opportunities available to the subjects satisfy the various career orientations. 4. RESULTS This section presents the results of testing the two hypotheses Testing H1: IS Personnel Career Anchors The results of the frequency analysis to determine the diversity of career anchors possessed by IS personnel are presented in table C. As can be seen from the table, IS personnel have a wide variety of career anchors, hence the data confirm the first hypothesis. Beyond the simple diversity, a number of interesting and perhaps surprising points can be found in the data. First, more of the subjects had a low score on the technical competence anchor than had a high score. Second, the vast majority of IS personnel had high scores on the managerial competence anchor. This would seem I75

6 Technical Competence: Low Score - 30 or below Between 30 and 40 High Score - 40 or above Managerial competence Low Score - 25 or bslow Between 25 and 40 High Score - 40 or above Security: Organizational Low Score - 20 or below Between 20 and 40 High Score 40 or atove Geographic: Low Score - 25 or below Between 25 and 45 High Score - 45 or above Autonomy : Low Score - 25 or below Between 25 and 45 High Score - 45 or above Service: Low Score - 25 or below Between 25 and 40 High Score - 40 or above Identity : Low Score - 28 or below Between 28 and 40 High Score - 40 or hbove Variety : Low Score - 25 or below Between 25 and 45 High Score - 45 and above Creativity: Low Score - 20 or telow Between 20 and 35 High Score - 35 and above Career Anchor Scores Table C 40.5% 26.2% 33.3% 3.0% 25.2% 71.8% 7.0% 43.5% 49.5% 26.2% 41.4% 32.4% % 12.0% 54.6% 33.4% I-- 4.0% 24.1% 71.9% 34.3% 25.3% 40.4% 0% 14.1% 85.9% 1.0% 31.3% 67.7% 176

7 to indicate a preference by these personnel for a managerial career rather than a technical career. The next interesting result was the high score on the service anchor. Only 4 individuals scored this anchor as being low and the vast majority, over 70 people, indicated that helping people (service) was important. Creativity also seems to be an important item to IS personnel. Sixty-seven individuals scored this anchor high while only one scored it low. The anchor which was overwhelmingly scored as high by most of the subjects was the anchor for variety. Eighty-five people indicated that having variety in their job and tasks was very important to them and no one indicated it as being of low importance. A profile of the sample based on the above results would be a group of IS personnel who consider managerial competence as being central and who also find the notions of variety, service, and creativity in their jobs as important. To determine the extent to which the different career anchors are associated with each other, Pearson correlations were computed among the anchors. The results are presented in table D. The strongest inverse relationship in the data is the one between managerial competence and technical competence. The data indicates quite strongly that as a person develops more of a managerial anchor their technical anchor declines. The other strong inverse relationship appears to be between autonomy and managerial competence. The data indicates that as people develop a stronger managerial anchor they are less likely to have a strong autonomy anchor. The subjects appear to perceive a managerial anchor and autonomy as being incompatible. The technical anchor covaries positively with autonomy, security, and creativity. It is possible that a technical career is perceived as the means to obtain these other career facets. Further analysis is required, however, as causal statements are not possible with cross-sectional correlational analysis. The managerial career anchor, on the other hand, is related very Pearson Correlations T M A os GS S I V C TECHNICAL (TI P4.001 Pc.003 PC037,2446 P< P4.070 MANAGERIAL (M) PC.001 P<.027 P<.006 Px P< P<. 040 AUTONOMY (A) P PC P< P<. 001 ORGANIZATIONAL SEC. (OS) P<.Oll P<.O P<.OOl Pe P<. 061 GEOGRAPHIC SEC (GS) P1.047 SERVICE (S) P.c PC.001 IDENTITY (I) VARIETY (V) CREATIVITY (C) N:S P< = not significant at P<.10 "able D I77

8 strongly, to the identity anchor. It may be that people see the way to associate or identify with a prestigious or important employer is to move into a managerial position with that employer. While the managerial anchor is also associated with the organizational security anchor and the service anchor, people associate it negatively with the geographic anchor. The subjects may see a managerial role as more likely necessitating a geographic move. The identity anchor was also strongly correlated with organizational security, and service. It is possible that individuals perceive larger more prestigious firms as offering more organizational security while at the same time requiring more of a service orientation Testing H2: Efficacy of Dual Career Paths The results of the correlation analysis for testing hypothesis two are presented in table E. Pearson Correlations TECHNICAL COMPETENCE MANAGERIAL COMPETENCE AUTONOMY ORGANIZATIONAL SECURITY GEOGRAPHIC SECURITY SERVICE IDENTITY VARIETY CREATIVITY Career Satisfaction.3580 ( r P=.ooo.3019 ( 98) P= ( ) P= ( ) P=.002 = Not Significant at PL.10 Table E The correlations between career satisfaction and the different anchors vary substantially. In five out of the nine correlations no relationship was found between the score on the career anchor and the score on the career satisfaction measure. The other four correlations are all significant but the strength of the relationships vary from anchor to anchor. The data only partially supports hypothesis two. The strongest relationship exists between career satisfaction and the managerial anchor, as expected. There is however, no relationship between the technical anchor and the measure of career satisfaction. The failure to detect this relationship is rather troubling given that both companies had specifically developed career paths which permit IS personnel to move up via a technical route. This finding will be discussed further in section 5.0. A strong relationship also exists between the satisfaction measure and the organizational security and identity anchors; individuals with higher scores on organizational security and identity also report greater satisfaction with their organizational career opportunities. This finding may be partially attributable to the inter-relationship between the managerial, organizational security and identity anchors reported in table D. In summary, hypothesis one was strongly supported by the analysis. Hypothesis two was only partially supported as no relationship was found between the career satisfaction measure and the technical competence anchor. The following section will discuss what the data indicates about the utility of building dual career ladders for IS personnel. 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The two most important findings of this paper are: 1) IS personnel have a variety of career motivators and, as shown for this sample, the technical anchor appears to be one of the least pronounced career orientations; and 2) the utility of the technical path must be questioned as the technical anchor scores were not related to the measure of career satisfaction. The failure to find a link between the technical anchor and the career satisfaction measure may be a result of the type of career movement the technical ladder permits. Schein [1971] notes that career 178

9 movement within an organization occurs in three directions: vertical, radial and circumferential. Vertical movement refers to changes in rank, circumferential movement refers to changes in department or function, and radial movement refers to changes in centrality or importance to the organization. Schein notes that upward vertical movement without an accompanying increase in radial movement is liable to leave the individual feeling detached from the organization and result in turnover. In a study of engineers and their career ladders, Goldner and Ritti [1967] found that the professional as opposed to the managerial ladder for engineers often failed because it did not increase their power or involvement in decision-making. In other words, it provided for vertical movement but did not provide for inward radial movement. Given the failure to find a relationship between career satisfaction and the technical anchor in this study it is quite possible that a similar situation exists for IS dual career paths. The technical career ladder while moving the IS specialist up the organization may not move him or her in. The data.presented in this paper should be viewed with caution as it provides only a brief diagnostic of a limited sample. The data set for this study was comprised of individuals who did not work for a large centralized data processing group and who were only involved in development work; this may have colored the findings. The high service scores, for example, may not be found among IS personnel in a more centralized mainframe environment. Indeed studies by Danziger and Gingras andmclean [1982] show a marked disinterest on the part of IS personnel in interacting with users. Career options are also likely to very greatly by industry and geographic location. The subjects for this study were employed by large commercial banks in NYC, hence any generalizations beyond this group may be difficult. Manufacturing industries located in more economically depressed areas of the nation will probably find completely different career priorities and career anchors for their IS staffs. These are all items which demand further investigation and research. Finally, this study was only able to provide a cross-sectional, static view of IS personnel and their careers. Longitudinal studies are needed to explore how IS career anchors develop and solidify, and to provide insight into how these anchors guide IS personnel through their careers. A few general comments for IS management, however, can be made based on this data. First, IS managers who are responsible for developing career options need to take a broader view of their personnel's career needs. As this paper has demonstrated IS personnel have a diversity of career needs beyond the technical and managerial and the IS manager should consider these when designing or reviewing his department's career options. Second, IS managers must also consider the extent to which their technical ladder promotes people in rank and salary but provides no real increase in centrality and importance. If IS managers build inappropriate ladders they may find that these career options result in moving staff up and out of the organization as opposed to helping them retain their high performing senior technical staff. REFERENCES 1. Bartol, K., Turnover Among DP Personnel: A Causal Analysis, Communications of the ACM, Volume 26, Number 10, Oct. 1983, pp Baroudi, J.J., The Impact of Role Variables on IS Personnel Work Attitudes and Intentions, MIS Quarterly, Volume 9, Number 4, Dec. 1985, pp Danzinger, J., The "Skill Bureaucracy" and Intraorganizational Control, Sociology --- of Work and Occupations, Volume 6, Number 2, May 1979, pp Delaney, C., A Systems Career Model, Journal of Informations Systems ManagemencWnter 1986, pp Delong, T., Reexamining the Career Anchor Model, Personnel, Volume 59, Number 3, 1982, pp Gingras, L. and E. McLean, Designers and Users of Information Systems: A Study in Differing Profiles, Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on IS, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Dec. 1982, pp Ginzberg, M., and J. Baroudi, MIS Careers -- A Theoretical Perspective, unpublished working paper, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, Goldner, F. and R. Ritti, Professionalism as Career Immobility, American Journal of Sociology, Volume 72, Number 5, 1967, pp Hall, D.T., & Associates, Career I79

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