本文研究的是斯里兰卡软件工程师的工作满意度与离职倾向之间的关系”。本章首先回顾研究背景。这里的研究问题,以证明目前的重要性,已被选定为论文的主题。它还暴露了软件产业及其雇员的性质所带来的经济、社会和管理问题.。它也意味着软件产业和经济领域的增长趋势,它可以提高新的创意产品在软件行业的手段。本章还讨论了研究背景、研究问题、研究目的、研究方法、论文结构、研究局限等,最后对全文进行了总结。
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 简介
1.1Research Background
This thesis is about “Relationship between Job Satisfaction and employee turnover intention of Software Engineers in Sri Lanka”. This chapter begins by reviewing research background. Here research problem is presented to justify the current importance of the topic that has been selected for the thesis. It also exposes the economic, social and management issues come with the nature of the software industry and its’ employees. Also it implies the growing trends of software industry and vast areas of economy that it can be enhanced by the means of new creative products in software industry. This chapter also discusses research background, research problem, research objectives, research methodology, structure of thesis, Limitation of the study and finally chapter summary is included.
During the last decade, Sri Lankan economy has witnessed significant contribution from sectors such as Industrial Exports and Information Technology. In the modern day, the rapid growth in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) of IT industry in the country supported Sri Lanka to rank among the top 25 countries in world rankings. Out of 25 countries Sri Lanka is in 21st place. (Central Bank report, 2013). Low cost and skillful workforce, enhance the working ethic, started doing business environment and favorable time zone have supported Sri Lanka to achieve the current ranking. There has been a lasting increase in profits from the software firms of Sri Lanka over the past duration, with American as well as European organizations outsourcing their software developments to Sri Lankan firms (Miline, 2007). The software industry accounts as the fifth largest export earner in the country and is growing rapidly. It is predicted to critically contribute to the country’s development process (Mendis, 2010).Annual Central Bank report 2013 implies, ”the earning from Information Technology/BPO services in Sri Lanka is expected to reach us dollars 1 billion by 2015”.IT service providers have still more to do to improve infrastructure, thence facilitating the expansion in the IT/BPO industry and the knowledge process outsourcing(KPO) industry in order to taken up Sri Lanka’s position further higher among the best outsourcing countries in the world. Software Industry is one of the most rewarding and upcoming industries in Sri Lanka as well as in the global world. In the situation of globalization, new technology has meant that more of the younger generation does their higher studies in computer science with the intention of finding a lucrative and satisfying job in the industry. In modern days software companies in Sri Lanka face a major management problem, call employee turnover. It is prevalent in a very high rate among software engineers. Software engineers work at one company for a short period of one or two years and then they move on to another after getting experiences from the previous company.
Sri Lankan Information and Communication Technology Association (SLICTA) launched the Information Technology Workforce survey in 2007, expresses the shortage of 42% of software developers per year in the country and 13% attrition rate in the field of software industry. Through thesis, Researcher identified four factors which influence the software engineers’ job satisfaction such as pay, supervision, co-workers and work itself. These first three factors are related to job context (hygiene factors) and last one is related to the job content (motivation factor)..In addition to these factors there are lots of factors affected to level of job satisfaction. Some of them are job security, interpersonal relationship, statues of growth, work conditions, company policies, achievement, responsibility, advancement, growth, recognition.
During the last two decade Sri Lanka witnessed a growth of offshore outsourced software engineering firm in the country. The literature provides evidence for both extensive opportunities created for software engineers and increased stress in the workplace (Aziz, 2004). However, the literature suggests that attitudes of software developers towards the characteristics of work firm in the offshore outscored sector have, yet, not been systematically examined (Aziz, 2004).
There is an increasing demand from the employers to the employees in the software industry to work for long hours. This is quite often seen in organization that is in to software development where software engineers are relatively individualistic in orientation, highly marketable and unlikely to show attachment to single company. Software companies are mostly project based, with project teams involved in delivering a high quality product to the end customer. The deadlines have a main significance and it often determines the amount of work involved and the amount of long time that each employee might have to put in, if the time allocated has not been correctly managed. Once a project is complete, the teams are assigned to subsequent other projects in a continuous basis resulting in the employees working for longer period more frequently. This leads to a greater imbalance in work and life possibly even causing poor work quality condition and health issues.
1.2 Research Problem
According to the Sri Lankan Information and Communication Technology Agency (SLICTA) 25,000 employees have been employed in software industry of Sri Lanka in 2012. The following figure shows this growth of the IT workforce in Sri Lanka.
Figure 1.1: Growth of IT workforce in Sri Lanka.
Source: SLICTA,(2012)
Under this circumstance, the IT exports are estimated to grow from US$ 80 M in 2004 to US$ 1,000 M in 2012. (SLICTA, 2012) thus making it a lucrative industry for perceives a career. In the survey report published by SLICTA in 2007, divided the software industry into three sections such as IT, (as a business where currently there are more than 175 companies in Sri Lanka) IT as service and Government sector. According to this survey IT sector has 10% of turnover rate and IT as a service has 8% of turnover rate and government sector shows 2% of turnover rate. The organizations in software industry are adversely affected in different ways by the issue of high employee turnover. New recruitment needs selection methods as well as training use for new candidates who cost a company a lot of money. It may reduce the performance of company and productivity drastically. Loyal customers may withdraw from the company. It is very difficult to attract new applicants if the employee turnover of a company is comparatively high. So one of the biggest issues which employers face is how to find and keep knowledgeable workers in their firms. This study will focus on hygiene and motivational factors which may change the level of job satisfaction of software engineers in Sri Lanka. Three are lot of opportunities which come to Sri Lanka from the developed countries, to automate their business process. Hence, there is a great need for a business to be able to enhance a highly skilled knowledgeable workforce which would be depended upon long term. So managerial concept during past two decades most software companies use numerous job satisfaction tools and strategies to improve job satisfaction.
Research problem has been formulated as “What is the relationship between Job satisfaction and employee turnover intention of software engineers in Sri Lanka?” The independent variable of this study is job satisfaction. Job satisfaction was measured using four dimensions namely. Pay, supervision, co-workers, works itself. Turnover intention is the dependent variables in this research.
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