Antecedents of project managers turnover intention: Psychological distress as mediator

Shuja ul Islam and Rida Chughtai
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Shuja ul Islam: FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan
Rida Chughtai: FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan

Journal of Administrative and Business Studies, 2019, vol. 5, issue 6, 303-315

Abstract: The Infomation Technology (IT) sector is growing rapidly there are vast opportunities for the IT personnel. The success of any project depends on the skills of project managers. This study aims to address the behaviour of project managers and project team leaders that are working in software houses in Pakistan that how project managers and project team leads react when they have to deal with complex and riskier projects. This study explores the effects of project related factors (project risk and shareholder relationship) on the software houses project manager’s intention to leave their jobs and psychological distress. The mediating effect of intrinsic motivation is also explored. This study intends to overcome the existing gap, as in literature these variables relationship is not studied. It was a time lag study based on two online questionnaires for data collection. Data was collected from the project managers and project team leaders of the software houses. Total 40 software houses were used for data collection. The findings suggest that psychological distress mediates the relationship of project risk, stakeholder relationship and intention to leave. There was no significant mediating effect of intrinsic motivation. The results showed that project manager intention to leave depend on psychological distress. The data was collected from the software houses of twin cities of Pakistan. So its results cannot be generalized to all software houses operating in Pakistan. Data was obtained from software houses operating at large level that are involved in multiple projects, less data was collected from the software houses operating at small level. This study contributes to existing body of knowledge of project management. The findings of this study will help the owners of project based IT organizations to understand the project related factors contribution in developing project managers and project team leads intention to leave job and how these factors affect their mental health that can lead to negative effects.

Keywords: Project complexity; Project risk; Stakeholder relationship; Psychological distress; Intention to leave; Intrinsic motivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:apb:jabsss:2019:p:303-315

DOI: 10.20474/jabs-5.6.1

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