The emotions of systems developers: an empirical study of affective events theory

The role of emotions in the workplace has received increasing attention from management theorists in recent years [2], yet information technology (IT) researchers have failed to consider the role of emotions on IT professionals. Many researchers approach IT from a human resources perspective that focuses on job outcomes such as stress, turnover, burnout, and satisfaction [3-6]. This study explores the emotions of IT professionals by addressing the research question: How can emotions help explain the job outcomes of IT workers?Affective Events Theory (AET) forms the theoretical foundation of this study. It argues that job outcomes can result from both affect or judgment-based processing. Attitudes are important in this process, but some outcomes result directly from emotions. Also, emotions are responses to work events that employees experience every day of their work lives. This potentially elevates the mundane events on the job as predictors of job outcomes.The study of AET in the IT domain uses an event-contingent experience sampling method. The subjects are senior-level IS undergraduate students engage in a semester long IS development project for their capstone Information Systems (IS) course. In addition to the daily emotion tracking data, the subjects completed questionnaires describing their levels of stress, burnout, and trust in their teammates. These methods and this theory hold promise in explaining job outcomes in the IT workplace.