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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
JUNE 2011
VOL 3, NO 2
Work Values of Information Technology Personnel and Their Antecedents
Yutaka Ueda, PhD (Corresponding author)
Yoko Ohzono, PhD
Faculty of Economics, Seikei University, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8633, Japan
Abstract
Previous studies on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) expected that information technology
(IT) personnel particularly tend to exhibit OCB differently from other jobholders owing to their job
characteristics. This article discussed workers’ work values that are closely associated with their
tendency to exhibit OCB. Data collected from 6,500 workers (218 of whom were IT personnel) were
analyzed to examine how the work values of IT personnel differed from those of other workers. The
empirical result showed that IT personnel had a significantly stronger challenging job and weaker
identification with the organization and contribution to society. Furthermore, overall satisfaction and
skill evaluation positively influenced some of the work values. Some implications for future studies
were also proposed.
Keywords: IT Personnel, Work Values, Organizational Citizenship Behavior
1. Introduction
Many researchers in the field of organizational behavior have focused on organizational citizenship
behavior (OCB) ever since the pioneering articles of the research group headed by Dennis W.
Organ, Indiana University, were published in the 1980s (Bateman & Organ, 1983; Smith, Organ, &
Near, 1983). Although it is true that almost any worker exhibits OCB to some degree, the frequency
of OCB varies across workers. One of the important goals of OCB research is to identify the factors
that produce differences in individual workers’ OCB. Past researchers have detected not only the
effect of attitudinal or dispositional factors of individual workers but also the effect of contextual
factors related to these workers, such as task, leadership, and reward systems in the organization, on
OCB. However, one of the themes less explored in OCB research is to identify a different tendency
to exhibit OCB among various jobholders. Although this is an important topic, it would require
researchers to collect a large amount of data from various jobholders in order to compare the
characteristics of OCB among them; this makes the research very difficult and costly.
Among various job categories, those in the field of information technology (IT) are considered as
one of the most important jobs in the modern information-centric society. Although no empirical
research has hitherto focused on OCB of IT personnel, some researchers expected that IT personnel
particularly tend to exhibit OCB owing to their specific job characteristics.
For example, Ueda (2007) estimated that job characteristics of IT personnel influence their OCB;
however, they could possibly have both positive and negative effects. As reviewed by Summer and
Niederman (2003–2004), an IT job has high role ambiguity and role conflict, which, in turn, have
been shown to have a negative impact on job satisfaction. Further, Moore (2002) pointed out that IT
personnel were prone to burnout syndrome. Antecedents like job dissatisfaction and burnout
syndrome negatively influence OCB (Cropanzano, Ruppo & Byrne, 2003; Organ, 1988; Organ et al.,
2006). However, the job of IT personnel is also said to have high autonomy. High job autonomy is
considered to have two opposite effects on OCB. It makes workers more responsible and motivates
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