• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.63-104
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• 2011

The study examines the relationships among employee's goal orientation, IT personnel competency, personal effectiveness. The goal orientation includes learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Personal effectiveness consists of personal work satisfaction and personal work performance. In general, IT personnel competency refers to IT expert's skills, expertise, and knowledge required to perform IT activities in organizations. However, due to the advent of the internet and the generalization of IT, IT personnel competency turns out to be an important competency of technological experts as well as employees in organizations. While the competency of IT itself is important, the appropriate harmony between IT personnel's business capability and technological capability enhances the value of human resources and thus provides organizations with sustainable competitive advantages. The rapid pace of organization change places increased pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. This challenge raises a number of important questions concerning organizational behavior? Why do some employees display remarkable flexibility in their behavioral responses to changes in the organization, whereas others firmly resist change or experience great stress when faced with the need to alter behavior? Why do some employees continually strive to improve themselves over their life span, whereas others are content to forge through life using the same basic knowledge and skills? Why do some employees throw themselves enthusiastically into challenging tasks, whereas others avoid challenging tasks? The goal orientation proposed by organizational psychology provides at least a partial answer to these questions. Goal orientations refer to stable personally characteristics fostered by "self-theories" about the nature and development of attributes (such as intelligence, personality, abilities, and skills) people have. Self-theories are one's beliefs and goal orientations are achievement motivation revealed in seeking goals in accordance with one's beliefs. The goal orientations include learning goal orientation, performance approach goal orientation, and performance avoid goal orientation. Specifically, a learning goal orientation refers to a preference to develop the self by acquiring new skills, mastering new situations, and improving one's competence. A performance approach goal orientation refers to a preference to demonstrate and validate the adequacy of one's competence by seeking favorable judgments and avoiding negative judgments. A performance avoid goal orientation refers to a preference to avoid the disproving of one's competence and to avoid negative judgements about it, while focusing on performance. And the study also examines the moderating role of work career of employees to investigate the difference in the relationship between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness. The study analyzes the collected data using PASW 18.0 and and PLS(Partial Least Square). The study also uses PLS bootstrapping algorithm (sample size: 500) to test research hypotheses. The result shows that the influences of both a learning goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.301, t = 3.822, P < 0.000) and a performance approach goal orientation (${\beta}$ = 0.224, t = 2.710, P < 0.01) on IT personnel competency are positively significant, while the influence of a performance avoid goal orientation(${\beta}$ = -0.142, t = 2.398, p < 0.05) on IT personnel competency is negatively significant. The result indicates that employees differ in their psychological and behavioral responses according to the goal orientation of employees. The result also shows that the impact of a IT personnel competency on both personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.395, t = 4.897, P < 0.000) and personal work performance(${\beta}$ = 0.575, t = 12.800, P < 0.000) is positively significant. And the impact of personal work satisfaction(${\beta}$ = 0.148, t = 2.432, p < 0.05) on personal work performance is positively significant. Finally, the impacts of control variables (gender, age, type of industry, position, work career) on the relationships between IT personnel competency and personal effectiveness(personal work satisfaction work performance) are partly significant. In addition, the study uses PLS algorithm to find out a GoF(global criterion of goodness of fit) of the exploratory research model which includes a mediating variable, IT personnel competency. The result of analysis shows that the value of GoF is 0.45 above GoFlarge(0.36). Therefore, the research model turns out be good. In addition, the study performs a Sobel Test to find out the statistical significance of the mediating variable, IT personnel competency, which is already turned out to have the mediating effect in the research model using PLS. The result of a Sobel Test shows that the values of Z are all significant statistically (above 1.96 and below -1.96) and indicates that IT personnel competency plays a mediating role in the research model. At the present day, most employees are universally afraid of organizational changes and resistant to them in organizations in which the acceptance and learning of a new information technology or information system is particularly required. The problem is due' to increasing a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty in improving past practices in accordance with new organizational changes. It is not always possible for employees with positive attitudes to perform their works suitable to organizational goals. Therefore, organizations need to identify what kinds of goal-oriented minds employees have, motivate them to do self-directed learning, and provide them with organizational environment to enhance positive aspects in their works. Thus, the study provides researchers and practitioners with a matter of primary interest in goal orientation and IT personnel competency, of which they have been unaware until very recently. Some academic and practical implications and limitations arisen in the course of the research, and suggestions for future research directions are also discussed.