Five degrees of separation: a human capital model of employment-related decisionmaking in the information technology workforce

Successfully implementing information technology (IT)-enabled strategy rests on the performance of IT professionals. Consequently, developing and retaining "IT human capital" is critical for many organizations. We introduce human capital theory from economics to the information systems (IS) literature for the study of turnover, present a new model of separation, and provide empirical results based on observed separation from a large diversified firm. We derive five categories of explanatory variables from multiple theoretical bases including IS, organizational studies, industrial psychology, and strategic management. Results indicate ways in which IT human capital differs from that in less knowledge-intensive and less dynamic occupations.