Nearing the Threshold: an Economics Approach to Assessing Pressure to Separate

Managing information systems (IS) professionals in American industry has been making headlines as technology-intensive businesses search for ways to cope with an ever-changing economic landscape. Consequently, understanding and predicting the impact of workforce-related policy and interventions that can influence employee behavior is crucial. This paper introduces three constructs aimed at refining our understanding of the mechanics of retention: pressure to separate, retention frontiers, and separation thresholds. These constructs enable a balanced view of relevant firm and individual level concerns. The constructs also provide a basis for a new approach to economic analysis of the potential effectiveness of action taken by a firm to change quitting or separation behavior: pre-implementation retention intervention assessment (PRI-assessment). We illustrate the application of the new approach using data on the observed separation behavior of 661 IS professionals at a large multi-division firm.