Job Attitudes as Predictor of Employee Turnover ...

Journal of Management Research Vol. 9, No. 3, December 2009, pp. 159-166

Job Attitudes as Predictor of Employee Turnover among Stayers and Leavers/Hoppers M. G. Shahnawaz and Md. Hassan Jafri Abstract The present study examines the relationship between job attitudes and employee turnover intentions in two categories of employees, labeled as stayers and leavers. The study aims at exploring how job satisfaction and organizational commitment predict employee turnover intention for stayers and leavers. Employees who had changed their jobs two or less than two times in the past four years were defined as stayers while those who had changed jobs two or more than two times in the similar period were considered as leavers/hoppers. Data were collected from 80 managers, selected randomly, from two Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) organizations situated in Delhi (NCR). Results showed that job attitudes were highly related to intention to leave the organization in both categories of employees. Job satisfaction predicted turnover intention in stayers while organizational commitment especially the affective and normative commitment predicted turnover intention better in leavers/hoppers. Keywords: Job attitudes, traditional wisdom model, stayers, leavers/hoppers

INTRODUCTION Employee turnover/attrition is no longer a big issue for the organizations because of global recession, as people are finding it difficult to retain their jobs. Lay offs, retrenchments, handing over the pink slips are the order of the day. However, before the current recession and meltdown, employee turnover and attrition had given sleepless nights to the organizations and human resource managers. It used to be one of the major challenges organizations faced. It was considered as a part of economic development and M. G. Shahnawaz (Corresponding Author) Department of Psychology Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi (India) Md. Hassan Jafri Gaeddu College of Business Studies Gedu (Bhutan)

globalization of the economy. According to the Times News, New York (2003) overall attrition rate is 42% in USA, 29% in Australia, 24% in Europe, 18% in India where as the global average is 24%. In Indian IT and BPO sectors the turnover situation used to be alarming. The turnover rates have been reported as high as 80% in the IT services sector (Gupta, 2001) and as high as 100% for Indian call centers (Mitchell, 2005, 2007). Turnover can be defined as the rate of change in the working staff of an organization during a defined period. Rossano (1985) defined turnover as “voluntary termination of participation in employment from an organization, excluding retirement or pressured voluntary withdrawal, by an individual who received monetary compensation from the organization”. Turnover is considered as a bad sign for the organization as it involves considerable visible and hidden cost. It may tarnish the image of the company as a bad employer.

Turnover results in loss of tacit knowledge that the employees might have developed during their association with the organization. However, sometimes some amount of turnover is good for the organizations because leaving of old people and adding of new ones bring new ideas, which help organizations not to become ‘psychic prisons’ and keep the organizational culture churning. Employee turnover is a complex behavior. Many causative factors have been associated with it and various theories have been proposed to unravel the mystery called “employee turnover”. Gallup conducted two polls in 2006 regarding turnover (Harter, 2008) on 44 organizations and 10,609 business units. It concluded that most people quit for a few explainable reasons such as 32% of the employees left for career advancement or promotional opportunities, 22% for pay, 20% for lack of job fit, 17% for management or general work environment etc. Similarly, Shahnawaz and Jaffri (2009) found the following factors as important predictors of employee turnover in the Indian context – job related, organization related, economy related, person related, the demographics of the employees and finally the societal and organizational culture. Since the earliest writings on employee turnover (March and Simon, 1958) it has attracted lots of theoretical attention from researchers. The early models were called ‘traditional wisdom models’ where employees’ turnover was linked to employees’ attitudes. This model remained dominant for quite some time. However, many new models were also proposed in the mean time such as shock and unfolding model and job embeddedness model. A thorough discussion on the recent developments on employee turnover models is beyond the scope of the present paper (The interested reader may find it in Shahnawaz and Jaffri , 2009). In the present study we have focused on the traditional wisdom model to see its efficacy in the present day context.

TRADITIONAL WISDOM MODEL Early models within the traditional wisdom approach were relatively simple as they linked turnover directly to job attitudes like satisfaction 160

and commitment (Porter, Steers, Mowday and Boulian, 1974). Later models were more complex, yet still attitude-centric. In these models, various decision making processes which were involved in withdrawal, were emphasized (e.g. Mobley, 1977; Mobley, Hornerand Hollingsworth, 1978., Hom and Griffeth, 1991). The most researched out of these was Mobley et al. model (1978). In this model, job dissatisfaction is said to have an influence on thinking of quitting, which in turn leads to intention to search. Intention to search is hypothesized to influence intention to quit, which leads to turnover. In this model, in addition to its mediated/indirect influences on search intentions and intention to quit, job dissatisfaction is said to have direct effects on these two variables. Furthermore, probability of finding a satisfactory alternative is hypothesized to influence both intention to search and intention to quit. Following the introduction of Mobley et al. (1978) model, several alternative models have been proposed (Bannister and Griffeth, 1986; Hom and Griffeth, 1991). These models can be conceived as offsprings of the Mobley model since they largely share the same structural network involving the same parameters, with changes in the direction and/or directness of a few parameter estimates. Besides job satisfaction other attitudes like organizational commitment and job involvement have also been included in this model (Griffeth and Hom 2001). Job satisfaction is one of the important themes in this framework. It has been defined as a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job - an affective reaction to one’s job and an attitude towards one’s job. The relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is a thoroughly investigated topic in the turnover literature. Many studies report a consistent and negative relationship between the two (Bluedorn, 1982; Mobley, 1982; and many others). Although past research suggests a stable negative relationship between job satisfaction and turnover, job satisfaction alone has been found to account for a small percentage of the total variance in the turnover model – less than 15% (Blau and Boal, 1989). This led (Mobley, 1982) to conclude that Journal of Management Research

“the fact that the relationship (between job satisfaction and turnover) is not stronger does not suggest that satisfaction should not be measured. It does suggest that measures of satisfaction must be combined with other measures to effectively predict and understand turnover.” Commitment is another attitudinal variable which has also been explored in the past. Commitment refers to the kind of relationship people share with the organization and has the potential to predict employee turnover (Porter et al., 1974). In fact, when the construct was introduced by Porter et al. in their seminal work, it was proposed as a better predictor of turnover than job satisfaction alone. Many conceptualizations of organizational commitment were proposed since then, most important being the Meyer and Allen (1997) who proposed a three component model of organizational commitment – affective, continuance and normative commitment. Affective commitment describes an alignment that employees feel between their organization and their personal value systems and desires. The continuous commitment refers to a state whereby employees are bound to their organization to the extent they “have to be” due to the benefits associated with staying versus the personal costs associated with leaving. Finally, the normative component refers to commitment based on a moral belief or obligation that “it is the right and moral thing” to remain with the organization. Each type of commitment ties the individual to the organization in different ways and will differently affect the manner in which the employee conducts him/herself in the workplace including their turnover intention and behavior (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch and Topolnytsky, 2002). Previous research found consistent negative correlations between organizational commitment and employee intention to leave the organization and actual turnover (Wong, Chun and Law, 1996; Meyer and Allen 1997; Wagner, 2007).

THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY Employee turnover has also been addressed from the perspective of personality and temperament since the beginning of theorization on turnover Volume 9, Number 3

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and the tradition is still on (Mobley, Griffeth, Hand and Meglino, 1979; Zimmerman, 2008). One very interesting notion was proposed by Ghiselli (1974). He explored the personality characteristics of those people who changed their job frequently and came up with an interesting concept ‘Hobo Syndrome’. He defined the hobo syndrome as “...the periodic itch to move from a job in one place to some other job in some other place.” He went on to say that “this urge to move seems not to result from organized, logical thought, but rather would appear more akin to raw, surging, internal impulses, perhaps not unlike those that cause birds to migrate.” This implies that for some people turnover and retention decisions are very impulsive ones. It may sound bizarre but theorization by Lee, Mitchell, Holtom, McDaniel and Hill (1999) has found support for this proposition. Recently Zimmerman (2008) carried out a meta analytical study on dispositional characteristics of the individual and turnover following Five Factor Personality Model. He found that five domains of personality are differently related to turnover intentions and behaviors. So it is quite possible that some people may hop job more frequently than others and we have many anecdotal evidence for this. Despite many anecdotes and theorization, employee turnover’s relations with attitudinal variables of leavers/hoppers and stayers have not been explored so far in the relevant literature. Hence the present study is a modest attempt to fill this gap in the knowledge.

AIM OF THE STUDY The study aims at exploring how job attitudes (Job satisfaction and organizational commitment) influence employee turnover in leavers/hoppers and stayers in the organization. Those people who have changed their jobs more than two times in the past four years have been categorized as leavers/ hoppers. On the other hand, people who have changed jobs two or less than two times in the similar time period may be considered as stayers. This distinction may sound arbitrary but data were collected from two very reputed ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) companies at a time when market was at boom 161

(2006-2007) and attrition was at the peak. ITES companies are also characterized by “turnover culture” (Abelson, 1993). This culture reflects an acceptance of turnover as part of work group norm and employees who work in high turnover culture believe that turnover is quite appropriate and acceptable. Therefore, people who have changed their jobs just two or less than two times in a span of four years in ITES company may be safely considered as ‘stayers’ while others may be called as ‘leavers’ or ‘hoppers’.

METHODOLOGY

Sample Data were collected from 80 managers from two ITES Companies in the National Capital Region of Delhi working at the same level in the organizational hierarchy. Responses were taken from two groups/types of employees – the first type consisted of employees who had changed job two or less than two times and the second type consisted of employees who had changed jobs more than two times in the past four years. Participants were in the age group of 24-27 years (Mean age was 25.50 yrs).

Job Satisfaction Questionnaire Job satisfaction questionnaire developed by Daftuar (1988) was used to measure job satisfaction. This gives overall measure of job satisfaction. The scale has 19 items and they have to be rated on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Reliability was measured by Cronbach alpha which was reported to be 0.95. Validity was measured by item - total correlations which ranged from 0.67 to 0.89.

Organizational Commitment Scale Organizational commitment scale developed by Meyer and Allen (1997) was used to measure organizational commitment. The scale consists of 18 items based on three dimensions of organizational commitment – Affective, Continuance and Normative Commitment. Each 162

dimension has six items in the scale. Reliability of the scale was reported to be .87 for affective, .75 for continuance and .79 for normative dimension. The scale has been rated on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Turnover Intention The 3-item turnover intention scale from the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire (Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins and Klesh, 1979) was used to measure turnover intention. The Cronbach alpha of the scale was found to be 0.87. The scale has been rated on 5point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Employee turnover is no longer a major issue due to global recession as employees are finding it hard to retain their jobs. However, till very recently it used to be the biggest challenge for the organizations especially in some sectors of the economy like IT, ITES and Finance. Multiple regression was used to ascertain how much of turnover intention is influenced by employee attitudes (Job satisfaction and Organizational Commitment) in two types of employees i.e., stayers and leavers/hoppers. Table 1 reveals that significant correlation exists between employee attitudes (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) and employee turnover intention in stayers and leavers/hoppers (0.51 and 0.65 respectively). It means that job satisfaction and organizational commitment were highly related to turn over intentions for both groups of employees. Adjusted R-square was 0.18 for the 1st types of employees and 0.36 for the 2nd types of employee. It implies that 18% of the variance in turnover intention can be attributed to employee attitudes in the first type of employees and 36% variance in the second group of employees. All the values of Adjusted R- Square were significant as indicated by the significant F-Values. This finding is in sync with the existing researches on turnover especially Journal of Management Research

Table 1: Multiple Regression Analysis for Turnover Intention as a function of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in both types of employees Employee Types 1st (Changed Job 2 times) Leavers/Hoppers

Multiple R

0.51

0.65

R Square

0.26

0.43

Adjusted R Square

0.18

0.36

Standard Error of estimate

1.51

1.02

F- Value

3.12**

6.65*

Level of Significance

0.05

0.01

** Significant at 0.01 level * Significant at 0.05 level

‘the attitudinal model’ which posited that job attitudes significantly influence employee turnover. However, past research which focused only on job satisfaction has reported that it alone accounts for small percentage of the total variance in the turnover model – less than 15% (Blau and Boal, 1989) and for some authors it is even lower, to be more precise less than 5% variance in turnover (Griffeth, Hom and Gaertner, 2000). These kind of findings led Molbey (1982) to comment that “the fact that the relationship (between job satisfaction and turnover) is not stronger does not suggest that satisfaction should not be measured. It does suggest that measures of satisfaction must be combined with other measures to effectively predict and understand turnover.” A closer look at the results above reveals that the combined influence of job satisfaction and organizational commitment is 18% for stayers, while it is 36% for leavers/hoppers. The findings of the present research support the contention of Mobley (1982). The result also implies that for those people who change their jobs very frequently, attitudinal model is still a very significant predictor of their turnover as it explains 36% of the variance. For stayers, attitudinal model explains 18% of the variance in the turnover. It appears to be less but it is a significant one. As mentioned in the beginning of

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the paper, data were collected during 2006-2007, when the Indian economy was at it’s peak and so was the attrition. Some of the sectors were badly hit by attrition. The turnover rates have been reported as high as 80% in the IT services sector (Gupta 2001) and as high as 100% for Indian call centers (Mitchell 2005, 2007). According to one report, attrition was 27% in ITES industry in 2007 (http://retention.naukrihub.com). So the findings of the present study very strongly suggest that during high economic activity and moderate to high attrition, employees attitudes are very strong predictors of turnover especially for those who have a history of changing jobs very frequently. Now let’s focus on the individual contributions of job satisfaction and organizational commitment to employee turnover of stayers and hoppers/leavers. The results presented in Table 2 clearly show that for the first type of employees (who changed job < 2 times), job satisfaction emerged as the significant predictor (t = 2.92, p < 0.05). However, for the second type of employees i.e., leavers/ hoppers, organizational commitment emerged as the better predictor than job satisfaction (t = 5.14, p < 0.01). The dimensions of commitment, too, emerged as the significant predictors of the turnover for this group of employees. The direction of beta was negative in all of the 163

Table 2 Dimensions

Standardized Beta Coefficient for Stayers

t-value

Standardized Beta Coefficient for Leavers/Hoppers

t-value

-0.05

0.31

-0.31

2.25*

0.18

0.90

-0.24

1.91

Normative Commitment

-0.14

0.06

-0.38

2.79*

Organizational Commitment

-0.07

0.43

-0.64

5.14**

Job Satisfaction

-0.47

2.92*

-0.10

0.79

Affective Commitment Continuance Commitment

** Significant at 0.01 level * Significant at 0.05 level

relationships except the continuance commitment in the first type of employees or stayers, indicating that job attitudes mostly influence the turnover in the opposite way. This finding is in sync with the existing researches which found consistent negative relationship between job attitudes and employee turnover (Mobley et al., 1978). For stayers, job satisfaction is the significant predictor (direction is negative) and according to Mobley et al. (1978), it is said to have an influence on thinking of quitting, which in turn leads to intention to search. Intention to search is hypothesized to influence intention to quit, which leads to turnover. This is the sequence of events as proposed by Mobley and other researchers in the traditional wisdom framework. It implies that people who don’t change their jobs very frequently even during heightened economic activity in the market, will change if they become dissatisfied with the job and job related issues. For hoppers, organizational commitment emerged as a better predictor than job satisfaction. Since the time of the seminal article by Porter et al. (1974), organizational commitment has always been projected as the better predictor of turnover than job satisfaction (Meyer and Allen, 1997; Khatri, Budhwar and Fern, 2001). The finding of the present research is in sync with the existing

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research. With regard to dimensions of commitment, normative appeared to be a slightly better predictor than affective of turnover for leavers/hoppers. Normative commitment is more relevant to the Asian context than the affective one (Gautam, Dick, Wagner, Upadhay and Davis, 2005) as it is more in tune with the sociocultural realities of the Asian countries. So the findings of the present study suggest that commitment, especially the normative and affective, has great potential in influencing the employees’ turnover intention, especially those who have the habit of changing jobs very frequently. The findings are usually in sync with the existing researches as job attitudes of employees explained significantly the turnover, but the amount of variance explained was more for leavers/hoppers than stayers. Organizational commitment and its dimensions emerged as better predictor for hoppers’s turnover and job satisfaction emerged significant for stayers. It implies that attitudinal model of turnover is still valid for explaining employee turnover especially for those who change their job frequently. This finding has potential for managing turnover of job-hoppers once the economy is back on the track.

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Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday R. T. and Boulian, P. V. (1974), Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction and Turnover among Psychiatric Technicians, Journal of Applied Psychology, 59: 603-609. Rossano, E. (1985), Factors Associated with the Turnover Intentions of Ohio Cooperative Extension County Agents, unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus. Shahnawaz, M. G. and Jaffri, M. H. (2009), Exploring Antecedents of Employees Turnover in India, Abhigyan, 26: 25-40. Times News, New York (2003), Attrition in Indian BPO Industry. Downloaded on July 15, 2008, from http://www.bpoindia.org/ research/attrition.shtml. Wagner, C. M. (2007), Organizational Commitment as a Predictor Variable in Nursing Turnover Research: Literature Review, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 60(3): 235-247. Wong, C. S., Chun, H. and Law, K. S. (1996), Casual Relationship between Attitudinal Antecedents to Turnover, Academy of Management Best Papers Proceedings 1995, pp. 342-346, Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. Zimmerman, R. D. (2008), Understanding The Impact Of Personality Traits On Individuals’ Turnover Decisions: A Meta-Analytic Path Model, Personnel Psychology, 61(2): 309-348.

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