IT Professionals and Their Psychological Contract in the IT Profession

The last decade has been unstable for the Information Technology (IT) professional. In the early millennium, an increased demand for ecommerce systems appeared in part because of increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT). However, the dotcom bust, the 2001 and 2007 recessions have created an increase concern on IT spending. Organizations have reduced not only IT purchases but also IT staff. These cutbacks threaten the relationship between the organization and their IT professionals. Moreover, given enough negative events, IT professionals may consider another career outside the IT field. The purpose of this research is to explore the possible influencers to psychological contract violation (PCV) in the IT profession by extending psychological contract theory to specifically address psychological contact breach with the IT profession (PCVP) and psychological contract violation with the IT profession (PCVP).