IT Employee Work Exhaustion: Toward an Integrated Model of Antecedents and Consequences

Abstract

Focusing on information technology (IT) professionals in state governments, this study found that organizational context (resources, participation, and feedback), job-related stressors (workload and role ambiguity), and career advancement opportunities affect work exhaustion experienced by state government IT employees. Work exhaustion, in turn, had a direct effect on IT employee turnover intentions and an indirect effect through its influence on job satisfaction. As a result, the study extends our understanding of IT employee exhaustion (a) by developing and testing a conceptual framework of work exhaustion that investigates the causal order of, and interrelationships between, the organizational context variables and job-related stressors previously recognized as antecedents of work exhaustion and (b) because of the potential contribution of career advancement opportunities in such a model.