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Professional Obsolescence in IT: The Relationships between the Threat of Professional Obsolescence, Coping and Psychological Strain.

Professional obsolescence has been recognized as one of the biggest threats confronting present day IT workers. Despite the imperative to understand the strategies for coping with this professional threat, research on the subject is relatively limited. Moreover, most studies on the subject till date are anecdotal. Clearly, theoretically grounded empirical research on the subject will not only help advance the understanding on professional obsolescence but will also provide actionable directions for IT professionals to work effectively. With this end in view we first draw upon the mediational model of occupational stress to theorize the relationships between the threat of professional obsolescence and problem-focused and emotion-focused coping and their consequent impacts on psychological strain. Next, we test the hypothesized model via survey data collected in two waves from a sample of 738 IT professionals from a large Indian IT company. Results show that the threat of professional obsolescence is positively related to problem-focused coping but not emotion-focused coping. In addition, emotion-focused coping of professional obsolescence is associated with higher levels of psychological strain, but problem-focused coping of professional obsolescence is not significantly associated with psychological strain. We discuss the implications that the results of this study have for theory and practice.