The Reported and Revealed Importance of Job Attributes to Aspiring Information Technology Professionals: A Policy-Capturing Study of Gender Differences

摘要

Although information systems practitioners recognize the importance of diversity in recruiting efforts and offer advice on targeted recruiting, IT researchers have not provided empirical research findings to support these efforts. In the absence of research demonstrating group-level differences in what employees want from their work, any attempt at targeted recruitment strategies is at best based on anecdotal evidence and at worst on mistaken premises and potentially invalid stereotypes. In this study, we examine gender similarities and differences in job attribute preferences among prospective IT professionals. Participants evaluated a series of multi-attribute job descriptions in a policy-capturing design. Although male and female aspiring IT professionals gave the same average importance ratings to work values and desired the same types of job attributes, there were some subtle gender differences in the weights they place on these factors in evaluating potential jobs. In some cases, observed results were contrary to gender differences reported in research suggesting that commonly accepted stereotypes do not necessarily apply. For instance, men were actually somewhat more averse to lengthy work weeks than women, and women did not place any less weight on income than men.