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The Impact of Natural Disasters on Employee Turnover: The Shocks and After-Shocks of Hurricane Katrina on IT Professionals

Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster in American history and created the need for organizations along the Gulf Coast to employ disaster management and recovery plans. With the ubiquitous nature of computers and technology, IT professionals were critical organizational assets in executing those plans in order to insure the safety and recovery of valuable information. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the impact natural disasters have on IT professionals and their subsequent turnover decisions. The theoretical guide for this study was the Unfolding Model of Turnover (Lee and Mitchell 1994) that identifies shocks, or jarring events, as a principal initiator of voluntary turnover. A mixed methods research strategy was employed consisting of a web-based survey of 153 IT professionals affected by Hurricane Katrina and 19 in-depth interviews. Over 58% of the surveyed participants who left their pre-Katrina employers followed one of Lee and Mitchells theorized decision paths. The classification results increases to 84% with the inclusion of a new emergent decision path; providing evidence that the unfolding model is appropriate for studying disaster related turnover. Findings from this study indicate there are actions organizations can take to retain critical IT employees. Likewise, there are organizational actions, or aftershocks, that can initiate the cognitive decision process leading to turnover. This research constitutes an initial step toward understanding the factors that influence the turnover of IT professionals who have been affected by a natural disaster as well as providing practical suggestions for organizational disaster management planning.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-10272008-132524
Date30 October 2008
CreatorsDavis, James
ContributorsPramon Achar, Tracey Rizzuto, James Van Scotter, Suzanne Pawlowski, Rudolf Hirschheim
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-10272008-132524/
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