Synergy and Its Limits in Managing Information Technology Professionals

Abstract

We examine the effects of human resource management (HRM) practices (e.g., career development, social support, compensation, and security) on information technology (IT) professionals' job search behavior. Job search is a relatively novel dependent variable in studies of voluntary withdrawal behavior in general and for IT professionals in particular. From a universalistic perspective, HRM practices individually and in combination exhibit independently additive effects on job search behavior. Our study contrasts this perspective with configurational theory, hypothesizing that proposed ideal-type configurations of HRM practices have synergistic effects on job search behavior. We contribute to the IT and broader HRM literature by theoretically explicating and empirically demonstrating with IT professionals the power of configurational theory to explain the relationship between HRM practices and job search behavior. Our empirical results show that two configurations of HRM practices—Human Capital Focused (HCF) and Task Focused (TF), which are high and low on all HRM practices, respectively—exhibit a synergistic relationship with the job search behavior of IT professionals. HCF has lower job search behavior than would be expected based on the independently additive effects of the HRM practices, whereas TF has correspondingly higher job search behavior. Our results also show that less than perfect horizontal fit detracts from the synergy of these extreme configurations. Just as importantly, several other nonextreme configurations of HRM practices exhibit independently additive effects for the HRM practices but not synergy, suggesting that synergy is limited to extreme configurations. We also discuss a number of implications for research and practice.