IT Workplace Preferences, Job Demands, and Work Exhaustion

ABSTRACT

Work exhaustion has become one of the main job stressors that leads to dissatisfaction and worker turnover. To retain IT talent, managers seek ways to reduce stress, such as lowering workload or increasing monetary compensation. In this paper, we explore work exhaustion in a developing country to examine antecedents and mitigating factors for work exhaustion. Using a survey of 289 IT professionals in Vietnam, a developing country with high turnover rates and limited IT resources devoted to talent retention, we test how job demands and workplace preferences impact work exhaustion. The findings show that a preference for strong workplace structure suppresses workers’ perceptions of work overload and work/home conflict. Additionally, preference for strong workplace autonomy surprisingly amplifies perceived work overload and has no impact on work/home conflict. Our findings suggest the importance of workplace characteristics as well as IT occupational culture in mitigating work exhaustion for IT employees.

KEYWORDS:

• Work exhaustion
• job demands
• structure
• autonomy
• IT occupational culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

^a In some companies, the survey was distributed by our contacts and thus we could not get the exact number of invitations. In the worst-case scenario, we estimated the response rate is about 25%.

^b https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country/vietnam/

^c https://www.wired.com/2012/12/llinkedin-20-percent-time/