Opportunity seeking activities of IT engineers with real options perspective

Abstract

The researcher studies opportunity seeking activities including self-employment and job hopping of IT engineers empirically from the viewpoint of real options. IT engineers could exercise options to start business and options of job hopping if these net present value (NPV) of their lifelong income exceeds the NPV of incumbent career. Based on the exchange option model , the theoretical hypotheses are presented regarding the relationship between startup/turnover options and the uncertainty variables including the corporate value of the incumbent hired organization and the human capital of IT engineers. In addition, the influence of industrial organizational problems, the mixture of new and old generation technology and the horizontal division of labor , are examined.