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Just Let Me Do My Job!: Exploring the Impact of Micromanagement on IT Professionals

Published: 11 August 2021 Publication History

Abstract

This study seeks to broaden our understanding of the popular, yet under-researched, concept of micromanagement in the IT workforce by exploring IT professionals' trust in the competence of their supervisor as an antecedent to their perceptions of being micromanaged. The study also explores whether felt responsibility is the mechanism via which micromanagement negatively affects IT professionals' job satisfaction and organizational commitment, both proximal factors of turnover. These relationships are explored under the aegis of the Management Control Systems models, leader-member exchange theory, and the job characteristics model. Results indicate that trust in supervisor competence is a significant antecedent to IT professionals' perceptions of being micromanaged and that felt responsibility fully mediates the relationship between micromanagement and organizational commitment. The findings underscore the importance of building IT professionals' trust in their supervisor's competence and suggest that organizations proactively provide early intervention to negate the potential adverse impact on organizational outcomes.

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    cover image ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems
    ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems  Volume 52, Issue 3
    August 2021
    97 pages
    ISSN:0095-0033
    EISSN:1532-0936
    DOI:10.1145/3481629
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 11 August 2021
    Published in SIGMIS Volume 52, Issue 3

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    Author Tags

    1. felt responsibility
    2. it workforce
    3. job satisfaction
    4. micromanagement
    5. organizational commitment
    6. trust in supervisor confidence

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