Organizational commitment of IT workers: leader support and differences across gender and race

Authors:
Jaime B. Windeler;Cindy Riemenschneider
Affiliations:
University of Cincinnat, Cincinnati, OH, USA;Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2013 annual conference on Computers and people research
Year:
2013

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine how psychosocial mentoring, career mentoring and leader-member exchange (LMX) contribute to organizational commitment for IT workers, as well as how these relationships differ according to race and gender. We draw on affective events theory, as well as the literature on IT personnel and leader support to explicate these relationships. We conducted a field study of 289 IT workers in a Fortune 500 company. LMX and career mentoring explained 28% of the variance in organizational commitment. Additionally, we found that the impact of career mentoring on organizational commitment is stronger for women than for men and that career mentoring influences organizational commitment for non-minority races but not minority races. Finally, the influence of LMX on organizational commitment is stronger for minority races than for non-minority races. This study contributes to the body of literature on IT personnel issues by exploring whether and how organizational support mechanisms enhance organizational commitment for private sector IT workers. We also demonstrate that race and gender are important considerations for researchers studying organizational commitment, mentoring, and LMX. Our findings suggest that managers can boost organizational commitment among IT workers by focusing on LMX and career mentoring. Moreover, they may want to place particular emphasis on career mentoring programs for women and on the development of supervisor/employee relationships for their minority race IT workers.