Overview

The past few years were marked with explosive growth in the information technology sector. The phenomenon of rapid integration of technologies by massive businesses and the increasing importance of information and communication technology [1] for economic development and advancement has created a globally significant increase in demand for highly skilled information technology expertise. ICT workers are needed in nearly every industry, whereby many computer scientists, computer engineers, systems analysts and computer programmers work for governmental institutions, insurance companies, academic and financial institutions. In order to maintain competitive edges and cost-efficient operations, high tech and non-technology companies and institutions are competing for the same workers. On the other hand, the supply of such employees grew at a slower pace, thus further raising global competition among companies and employers. This shortage in ICT professionals has plagued the sector by enormous levels of employee turnover, and job-hopping from one company to another and from one country to another.

The fierce and global competitive market has created high escalations in salaries paid to ICT professionals, whereby labor employed in the ICT sector has become relatively paid better off than others in similar positions in different industries. Natarjan (2000) asserts that the ICT sector has clearly different measures than other sectors. For example, a fresh graduate with minimal ICT knowledge is paid more than an executive in other fields. Respectively, the concept of rewards has undergone a sea change in the information age (Natarjan, 2000).

It is important to note that employers in this tight labor market have been suffering from high turnover rates and difficulties in employee recruitment, retention, and retraining. Furthermore, the global competition has led to a case of "brain drain," whereby countries are losing their most skilled professionals to other countries. In that context, the brain drain scenario has been significant in the IT sector in Egypt, whereby the majority of skilled employees have been seeking jobs abroad aiming for higher pay and more opportunities for training and development. With the increasing importance of the industry in Egypt, failure to meet demand for IT professionals could have severe consequences for the economy's competitiveness and growth, thus creating urging needs to retain skilled professionals and meet their needs. Battey (2000) states that there is a need to find out what people want and try to give it to them. The significant growth of the ICT industry in Egypt over the past few years has created a rising need and demand for highly skilled ICT professionals. The fact that this enormous level of demand is eminent at a worldwide scale creates a critical importance of acquiring and retaining these skills. Additionally, the growing importance of ICT to economic growth and development makes it necessary to maintain local ICT specialists within the country.

Respectively, motivating employees and creating a high level of job satisfaction can achieve retaining ICT professional skills. In accomplishing this target, it is necessary to study the current level of employee job satisfaction in the ICT sector in Egypt, and identify the key job aspects that affect their satisfaction. Furthermore, it is essential to understand the key factors that drive skilled labor to seek job opportunities abroad. Understanding underlying job satisfaction factors and drivers in this research will help ICT companies better meet employee needs so as to retain company staff.

The main objective of this research is to use theoretical and empirical evidence to understand the overall level of job satisfaction among ICT professionals in Egypt, identifying the major factors that affect their satisfaction, and highlight the key driving forces leading to the brain drain of skilled ICT professionals to jobs abroad. The research focuses on ICT sector in Egypt, which has not been an issue previously considered. The research attempts to study whether Egyptian ICT employees are satisfied or not with their jobs; and, whether that encourages them to look for job opportunities abroad or not. The research was developed through the conduct of a case study that includes a set of surveys and interviews covering a sample size of 110 respondents in addition to secondary data that was not comprehensive in the case of covering the market in Egypt due to lack of documentation. In that respect, the conduct of the research had a number of limitations that included lack of resources and statistics available on the ICT sector in Egypt such as number of companies and number of employees in the sector. There were only a few publications about the sector however the content was not comprehensive [2]. Moreover, limitations included lack of publications about the issue of job satisfaction in the ICT sector in particular. Additionally, certain multinational firms had restrictions on conducting employee surveys inside their companies. Finally, the number of people willing to answer an online questionnaire was very limited, thus creating a high fallout rate for questionnaires distributed online.

[1]For simplicity purposes, the acronym IT will be used for information technology and ICT will be used for information and communication technology throughout the chapter.

[2]Publications used included documents published by the Cabinet of Egypt Information and Decision Support Center, The American University in Cairo Library and the American Chamber of Commerce.



Managing Globally with Information Technology
Managing Globally with Information Technology
ISBN: 193177742X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 224

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