The Power of Linkedln: Will IT professionals leave their organization for professional advancement due to participating Linkedln?

This proposal explores a common phenomenon of turnover intention - intention to leave an organization for professional advancement (ILPA). Nowadays, Linkedln provides a good platform for professionals to get connected, to share their experience in career development and to seek jobs. Based on self-determination theory, we would like to investigate how participating in Linkedln influences ILPA. In our theoretical framework, we first argue that professionals would receive autonomy, competence and relatedness supports for career development from participating in Linkedln. Second, these three essential supports for career development would drive the autonomous and controlled motivations for participating in Linkedln. Third, we hypothesize that the autonomous motivations for participating in Linkedln have a positive influence on both affective professional commitment and normative professional commitment. Moreover, the controlled motivations for participating in Linkedln have positive influence on continuous professional commitment. Fourth, the influence of autonomous and controlled motivations on the three dimensions of professional commitment will be mediated by actual use of Linkedln. Fifth, these three dimensions of professional commitment have a positive influence on ILPA. Control factors such as organizational commitment, professional tenure, organizational tenure and biographic profile will be surveyed. This study will contribute to the literature on two untapped areas - 1) to what extent social media influence professional commitment and ILPA, and 2) how SDT can explain why people are so involved with Linkedln. Hence, this study will shed light on turnover intention and SDT from a new perspective. Moreover, the extent to which participating in Linkedln influences ILPA will be examined in the context of IT professionals in Hong Kong. Last, the findings of this study will draw the attention of companies in setting their policies for retaining IT professionals. The target population of this study will be those Hong Kong IT professionals, who are active participants in Linkedln. Using an online survey, participants will be invited by emails posted to their Linkedln discussion groups such as the "Hong Kong IT Professionals Association." Reminders will be sent, and we expect a response rate of around 20%. To control for common method bias, we will collect the data in three waves. The first wave will involve constructs related to the supports and motivations for participating in Linkedln as a career development tool. The second wave is to collect use data such as number of existing connections, and the third wave will be on constructs related to commitments and ILPA.