Chang Ling-Hsing, Wu Sheng
Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan.
Department of Information Management, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Tainan 71005, Taiwan.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2023 Sep 21;13(9):785. doi: 10.3390/bs13090785.
The career anchors of information technology personnel (ITP) are critical factors influencing their career satisfaction (CS), and these factors are also influenced by national culture. Although a number of scholars have studied the internal CS of employees, these scholars have not explained how to increase the CS of ITP from both individual and organizational perspectives and to further improve the success rate of IS projects. Thus, this study adopts the goal-achievement gap (discrepancy) theory to explore the gap between the "internal career desires (career wants, CW)" and "external career opportunities (career have, CH)" of ITP in two different cultural societies, namely mainland China and the United Arab Emirates, and whether the gap impacts their CS. The data in this study were collected from the Internet. A survey was posted on Internet discussion forums for full-time ITP participants within organizations in China and the United Arab Emirates; thus, the results of this study are possibly only generalizable to these two countries. Finally, the results of this study provide the following contributions: (1) There are 13 career anchors (technical competence, managerial competence, autonomy, organizational stability, challenge, lifestyle, identity, creativity, variety, service, entrepreneurship, geographic security, and learning motivation) of ITP in China, which can be divided into three categories, and these are totally different from the four categories identified by ITP in the United Arab Emirates. (2) The surface analysis approach (RSA) to test the curvilinear relationship between the CW, CH, and CS of ITP indeed can explain more than the linear SEM (structural equation modeling) test between the CW and CS, CH, and CS separately, both tests are in two different cultural societies, China and the United Arab Emirates.
信息技术人员（ITP）的职业锚是影响其职业满意度（CS）的关键因素，而这些因素也受到国家文化的影响。尽管许多学者研究了员工的内部职业满意度，但这些学者并未从个人和组织角度解释如何提高ITP的职业满意度，以及如何进一步提高信息系统（IS）项目的成功率。因此，本研究采用目标达成差距（差异）理论，探讨在中国大陆和阿拉伯联合酋长国这两个不同文化社会中ITP的“内部职业期望（职业愿望，CW）”与“外部职业机会（职业拥有，CH）”之间的差距，以及该差距是否会影响他们的职业满意度。本研究的数据通过互联网收集。在中国和阿拉伯联合酋长国的组织内，针对全职ITP参与者在互联网讨论论坛上发布了一项调查；因此，本研究的结果可能仅适用于这两个国家。最后，本研究的结果提供了以下贡献：（1）中国ITP有13种职业锚（技术能力、管理能力、自主性、组织稳定性、挑战、生活方式、身份认同、创造力、多样性、服务、创业精神、地域安全感和学习动机），可分为三类，这与阿拉伯联合酋长国ITP所确定的四类完全不同。（2）在中国大陆和阿拉伯联合酋长国这两个不同文化社会中，用于检验ITP的CW、CH和CS之间曲线关系的表面分析方法（RSA）确实比分别检验CW与CS、CH与CS之间的线性结构方程模型（SEM）能解释更多内容。
