Experienced Meaningfulness and Calling: Effects on IT Professionals' Retention Intention

Research in the broader management and related fields have consistently highlighted the importance of calling and experienced meaningfulness of work on work outcomes. Interestingly, these concepts have made little in-roads into the field of IT research. In this paper, we propose that experienced meaningfulness and calling offer a new perspective to understand IT professionals' turnover and turnaway intentions. Drawing on extant theory, we hypothesize that experienced meaningfulness has a negative direct effect on both turnover and turnaway intentions. Calling, on the other hand, has a negative direct effect on turnaway intentions, but moderates the effect of experienced meaningfulness on turnover intentions. Results from our large-scale study showed support for the hypothesized relationships.