Comparing IT and non-IT firms in corporate social responsibility and financial context for attracting and retaining employees

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how information technology (IT) firms are different from non-IT firms in terms of corporate social responsibility and financial variables for attracting and retaining employees.Design/methodology/approachThrough logit regression models, the authors used corporate social responsibility and financial variables to examine the differences between 512 Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For and a random sample of 512 Non-Best Companies peer firms.FindingsThe analysis results show that IT firms are stronger in terms of research and development spending, return on assets, Tobin’s q and leverage conditions, as well as employee relations and environmental performance in corporate social responsibility. Moreover, for IT firms, innovativeness (characterized by high research and development expenditures) is by far the strongest predictor of whether a company is selected to be on the Best Companies to Work For list.Research limitations/implicationsThis research demonstrated a hybrid, multifaceted research design using different analysis tools to explore new factors of a research topic. The results confirm the associations among variables, which may not represent causal relationships.Practical implicationsThe results shed light on the relationship between corporate social responsibility/finance and IT employee turnover, which provides another dimension for management’s consideration beyond the classic psychometric/fringe benefit analysis for examining employee turnover.Social implicationsIT firms’ superior ability to attract and retain employees using their innovativeness may impact the general public’s career planning and training decisions.Originality/valueThis research project integrated data from four different sources and investigated the IT employee turnover issue from the organizational level rather than the individual employee level.