An investigation of the career path of the EDP professional

Recent years have seen a tremendous growth in the number of persons employed in data processing (DP) positions. One researcher has estimated that the field grew by 234% from 1965 to 1975 as more and more individuals entered DP positions (Sullivan and Cornfield, 1979). This growth is not surprising given the rapid expansion of computer utilization in private commercial organizations, i.e., from one company in 1954 to approximately 100,000 today (Loeske and Sonquist, 1979). Furthurmore, with rapid technological changes continuing to take place and a growing demand from the public for computer services in general, a high level of growth in DP positions is expected for the future. U.S. government statistics predict that a 55% increase in personnel will occur across three professional categories in this field (i.e., programmer, programmer analyst, and other specialists) from 1974-1985 (Mooney and Tschetta, 1976).Despite optimistic predictions for future growth, organizations hiring DP personnel have been experiencing high turnover rates in these positions which have made staffing even current jobs a difficult task. A recent national survey of 245 diverse organizations carried out by the A.S. Hansen Consulting firm reported a mean annual separation (turnover) rate of 25.1% (Green, 1980). Other surveys have reported similar higher percentages, such as 28% (McLaughlin, 1979). In general, most of the turnover may be termed voluntary, i.e., due to the empolyees' rather than the organizations' volition.While there are a significant number of studies (1,3,4,5,6) that focus on the turnover behavior of data processing professionals, not much work has been done in understanding the career profiles of these individuals. Some studies (10,13) identify a carefully planned career path as one of the variables that can attract and retain data processing professionals, along with other variables such as salary, job identity and sophisticated computer equipment. Cougar (7) alludes to the fact that the data processing professionals of the 80's have to be brought into the mainstream of business if they are to feel committed to organizational goals rather than their own. While this can be done through job assignments that have organizational, identity, it is also possible to encourage committment through interesting and challenging career plans for individuals that are congruent with the organizational goals.Many organizations fail to treat the long-term career pathing of a new employee as a top-priority. Instead, the emphasis often is placed on the immediate job challenge and the modern equipment used in the organization. This will have the effect of attracting individuals who want to gain short-term experience rather than those with long-term committment. This may be attributed partly to the pressure put on the organizations to fill the voids quickly so that systems projects may not be delayed and also to a lack of understanding of what constitutes a DP career. This is in complete contrast to other management professions such as accounting, marketing, and finance where the career paths are laid out to enable one to reach positions such as partners (in accounting firms), comptrollers, product managers, and vice-presidents of finance.Albrecht (2) discusses an elaborate procedure for constructing career paths. This procedure maps various position categories to different tasks in application development and maintenance. Given the nature of the tasks an individual has to perform for each position in the career ladder, one can define the knowledge and skills that are necessary to become successful in that position. Such a procedure can motivate an individual to expand his/her skills to meet the challenges of an individual's chosen career path. Even though this does not include all segments of the MIS operations, it does address the career pathing issue with care.The objective of this paper is not to propose a new model for constructing career paths, but to observe the career paths taken by a group of DP professionals over a span of 10 to 20 years. This should result in drawing some conclusions about the frequencies with which certain paths are taken and their characteristics. This could provide some guidelines to organizations that may wish to construct career paths for their employees. For this study, Figure 1 will be used as a representative organizational structure for a DP/MIS department. The position categories and the number of divisions in this organizational hierarchy are chosen to represent the broad spectrum of position titles used within organizations under the four major functional characteristics of an DP/MIS department: operations, application development, computer system development and enhancement, and internal consultants/specialists. These broad categories are briefly defined in Figure 1 and are mapped to various position categories used by Datamation (10) in their annual survey (see Appendix).