The impact of open management on employee turnover in small information technology firms in South Africa

The purpose of this research is to ascertain whether open management (OM)significantly reduces employee turnover in small South African InformationTechnology (IT) firms. Human Resource Management literature widely predicts that OM increasesemployee performance, commitment and retention. By 2010 there will be morethan one-hundred-thousand unfilled IT jobs due to the skills shortage. The highlabour demand and short supply introduces a counter force to the OMpredictions, namely market-pull. This research tests the relative strengths ofmarket-pull and loyalty created by OM practices by means of five hypothesistests. The tests include OM awareness, historic turnover comparisons andturnover intention comparisons. Interviews were held with the owners of twelve small IT firms. Fifty-threeemployee surveys were collected. Most firm owners were not formally aware ofOM. Historic turnover and future turnover intentions were lower in openmanaged firms, thus affirming current literature. The practical implications are that small South African IT firm owners shouldendeavour to understand OM and also adopt it, first to remain competitive andsecond to retain key employees. A possible model to predict turnovercandidates based on open or closed rating is also proposed. Copyright © 2008, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria Please cite as follows: Swanepoel, V 2009, Simulation of a building heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system, MBA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03172010-123501/ > G10/101/ag