Tenace Kwaku Setor

Executive Pay Before and After Technology IPOs: Who Receives More?

Technology IPOs expose Information Technology (IT) firms to significant challenges that are fundamentally different from those faced during the founding or startup stage. To tackle the post-IPO challenges, IT firms pay premium wages to hire professional executives from the external labor market rather than from within. Yet, how the executive pay of external hires compares to that of internal hires when IT firms mark significant milestones in their lifecycle remain understudied. The current study therefore examines the pay of internal and external hires and place it within the context of the IPO timeline i.e. pre- and post-IPO. By analyzing data from multiple sources using a linear mixed effects modelling technique, we find that IT firms pay internal hires significantly higher than external hires in the pre-IPO stage. In the post-IPO stage, IT firms pay external hires significantly higher than internal hires. We discuss the implications of the findings on theory and practice.

Professional Obsolescence in IT: The Relationships between the Threat of Professional Obsolescence, Coping and Psychological Strain.

Professional obsolescence has been recognized as one of the biggest threats confronting present day IT workers. Despite the imperative to understand the strategies for coping with this professional threat, research on the subject is relatively limited. Moreover, most studies on the subject till date are anecdotal. Clearly, theoretically grounded empirical research on the subject will not only help advance the understanding on professional obsolescence but will also provide actionable directions for IT professionals to work effectively. With this end in view we first draw upon the mediational model of occupational stress to theorize the relationships between the threat of professional obsolescence and problem-focused and emotion-focused coping and their consequent impacts on psychological strain. Next, we test the hypothesized model via survey data collected in two waves from a sample of 738 IT professionals from a large Indian IT company. Results show that the threat of professional obsolescence is positively related to problem-focused coping but not emotion-focused coping. In addition, emotion-focused coping of professional obsolescence is associated with higher levels of psychological strain, but problem-focused coping of professional obsolescence is not significantly associated with psychological strain. We discuss the implications that the results of this study have for theory and practice.

The Evolving Emphasis on Hard and Soft Skills in the IT Profession

Technology IPOs expose Information Technology (IT) firms to significant challenges that are fundamentally different from those faced during the founding or startup stage. To tackle the post-IPO challenges, IT firms pay premium wages to hire professional executives from the external labor market rather than from within. Yet, how the executive pay of external hires compares to that of internal hires when IT firms mark significant milestones in their lifecycle remain understudied. The current study therefore examines the pay of internal and external hires and place it within the context of the IPO timeline i.e. pre- and post-IPO. By analyzing data from multiple sources using a linear mixed effects modelling technique, we find that IT firms pay internal hires significantly higher than external hires in the pre-IPO stage. In the post-IPO stage, IT firms pay external hires significantly higher than internal hires. We discuss the implications of the findings on theory and practice.

College-Based Career Experiences as Determinants of IT Labor Market Entry: A Survival Analysis Model

Novice IT professionals are not well-endowed with experience and professional knowledge-attributes gained in the course of IT work-which could facilitate labor market outcomes such as entering the IT workforce immediately after completing college education. However, college-based career experiences such as job shadowing, mentorship, internships and cooperative education are valuable sources of human capital which can engender good future performance and productivity; and, thus, can often decide the employment fate of novice IT professionals. The current study draws on human capital theory and develop a set of hypotheses relating college-based career experiences to the likelihood of securing IT jobs. We test our hypotheses using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort. We find that hands-on forms of college-based career experiences such internships and cooperative education increase the likelihood of securing IT jobs immediately after completing college. We do not find support for vicarious forms of college-based career experiences i.e. mentorship and job shadowing. We discuss the implications of our results on research and practice.

Early Career Experiences of IT Professionals

Considerable IT research has examined issues pertaining to IT careers and outcomes. Prominent among this stream of research are studies that have examined IT human capital endowments as determinants of IT career success and mobility patterns of IT professionals as they traverse career paths. According to Joseph, Boh, Ang and Slaughters analysis of 500 IT professionals drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey for Youth 1979 cohort dataset, IT career paths are more diverse than the traditional view of technical vs managerial career paths. The career histories of IT professionals revealed three distinct career paths i.e. IT careers, Professional Labor Market (PLM) and Secondary Labor Market (SLM). IT professionals who took the IT and PLM career paths enjoyed more career success in terms of pay received relative to those who took the SLM route.

The effect of job stress on job performance amongst IT professionals: the moderating role of proactive work behaviours

The heavy dependence of modern businesses on information technologies and systems has expanded the job roles and increased the work demands and pressures of Information Technology practitioners. IT professionals who cannot cope with the ever increasing demands of their work experience high levels of occupational stress. Occupational stress has a negative income on work-related outcomes such as job performance. Extant research on stress-related studies have focused on passive or reactive strategies of coping. I propose a proactive approach by arguing that proactive work behaviours moderate negative relationship between job stress and job performance. I draw on Hobfolls Conversation of Resources theory (1989) and the proactive coping literature (Aspinwall and Taylor, 1997) in the present proposal. A quantitative methodology is proposed for the study. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.