CAREER ADAPTABILITY AND INTENTION TO LEAVE AMONG ICT PROFESSIONALS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

ABSTRACT

Adaptability was found to be one of the important aspects for employees in order for them to survive in their career especially to those in the ICT industry. The ICT work nature involved with consistent work changes, intensive creative thinking, and advanced technological upgrading. Although organizations supposed to encourage career adaptability among the employees, previous studies however showed that such encouragement contributed to the employees’ turnover rather than retention. In order to generalize the previous findings into the Malaysian work context, this study explored whether career adaptability would have such influence on intention to leave the organization and the career. Findings of this study found that career concern, career control, career curiosity and career confidence were negatively correlated to both intentions to leave. However, only career control and career confidence were found to be significance in explaining the study model in multiple regression analyses.  Implications of this study and recommendation for future studies were discussed.