System Developers’ Nature of Work Characteristics and Their Relationship with Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction

IT professionals’ level of organizational commitment and job satisfaction is important in minimizing turnover, improving job performance, minimizing absenteeism, and increasing the level of job involvement. This study explores various nature of work characteristics as a contributing factor to IT professionals’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Nature of work for the IT context of systems development is specified in this study as meaningfulness of work, task autonomy, task feedback, the level of group cohesion, and the level of role stress. Data were gathered from a survey of 124 IT professionals in systems development roles to capture perceptions regarding the specified nature of work constructs on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The results of this study indicate that organizational commitment is positively related to job satisfaction and meaningfulness of work and negatively related to role stress. The results also indicate that job satisfaction is positively related to group cohesion and negatively related to role stress. Findings extend prior research by assessing the individual impact of specific nature of work characteristics on IT professionals’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment and providing new insight into group cohesion for the IT context. IT managers can use this information to increase employee organizational commitment and/or job satisfaction by considering role stress, group cohesion, and job characteristics when making project assignment and job/work design decisions.