Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Definitions of terms
In this section, I would be introducing 6 terms of definition, which are millennials, values, work values & influence factors, job engagement, turnover and turnover intention.
2.1.1 Millennials
Millennials, comprises with 76 million individuals, is the newest generation to enter society for engaging in or available for work who were born from 1980 to 2000 (Jefferies & Hunte, 2003; Cennamo & Gardner, 2008; Lyons et al., 2005a). They are the most optimistic, educated generational cohort group in U.S. history (Zemke, Raines,
& Filipczak, 2000) who are considered as talent pool by numerous organizations. Also, employers are looking for means to collect and retain this group of young potential for promising human resources of the companies (Glass, 2007; Howe & Strauss, 2000; C.
Martin & Tulgan, 2001) in order to pave the way to company success.
Yet, this group of individuals grows up under the environment involving computer technology, communication, multitasking, text messaging as well as computer messaging (Alsop, 2008; Tulgan, 2009). With access to personal computers and smart phones since childhood stage allows them to travel virtually (Lancaster & Stillman, 2002; Ryan, 2007). Therefore, they have more access and freedom to travel and to move across borders compare to the prior generations. Furthermore, they are also described as social, street smart, responsible, and achievement oriented (Jefferies & Hunte, 2004;
7
Lancaster & Stillman, 2002; Tulgan, 2009). They are the most watched-over generation in the history who accept authority, respect rules, and are optimistic about the future (Jefferies & Hunte, 2004; Alsop, 2008; Zemke et al., 2000).
Nevertheless, Millennials, shown as a generation indulged with praise and attention, are often depicted from confident to arrogant (Cekada, 2012). Indeed, they are uniquely different owing to their personal goals, achievements and desires, but these traits seem to create contradict while them showing interest working well spontaneously.
For example, Alsop (2008) also addressed how frequently contemporary research literature portray millennials as narcissistic as well as egocentric, what is more that they are also characterized as the most philanthropic generation in history according to the report by Pew Research Center (Taylor & Keeter, 2010).
Perhaps these contrasting behavioral beliefs are the reasons why millennials is a generation involve strong representation such as assertive, confident, and entitled (Twenge, 2006).
After introducing the generation of millennials, there are also other generation, which are categorized in the following section:
1) Veteran: Individuals born in the US between 1925 and 1945, who grew up in the environment encountered by the Great Depression and World War II (Alsop, 2008;
W. Strauss & Howe, 1991; Zemke et al., 2000); and moreover considered as the Silent Generation (W. Strauss & Howe, 1991), Traditionalists (Zemke et al., 2000), and the WWII Generation (Zemke et al., 2000).
2) Baby Boomers: Individuals born in the US between 1946 and 1964 (after World
8
War II) who grew up in an era of progress, optimism and opportunity (W. Strauss
& Howe, 1991)
3) Generation X: Individuals born in the US between 1965 and 1979, who grew up in an era of technological savvy and were raised in the age of dual-career families;
also known as the 13th Generation (Zemke et al., 2000), Baby Busters (Zemke et al., 2000), Post-Boomers (Zemke et al., 2000), and the Lost Generation (Zemke et al., 2000).
2.1.2 Values
What are values? Values are enduring beliefs and the preference states that individuals or the society behave towards any modes of conduct or to any kinds of end-state of existence (Rokeach, 1973). From viewing this point of view, values maintain the function to lead and produce individuals’ final behavior that influences decision making and yet, to support ones to make the best solution to resolve conflicts. Moreover, values also possess the function of stimulating personal achievement of individuals (翁 淑緣，1984). Furthermore, values are described as the unconsciousness of individuals developing through a series of impact of society, culture, and also personality (Hofstede, 1980; Dose, 1997).
However, some stated that values involve positive and negative interpretations, which implicate the behaviors or outcomes are preferable conducted by individuals. For that reason, objectivity and rationality cannot be found in values. In other words, values are the most basic foundation of understanding attitude, consciousness, personality and a sense of encouragement (Robbins, 1992). Besides, values could be learnt which are positioned as standards for individuals or groups to execute better decisions through a
9
more accurate precision (Peterson, 1972).
Values could be categorized in four aspects (Enz, 1986):
1) Environmental-related 2) Work-related
3) Social-related 4) Individual-related
By viewing these four aspects of values, most of the scholars regard values as latent modes of thinking through people criticizing activities or results which also indicate the relationship between the evaluators and the one being evaluated. Yet, this relationship is supposed to be permanent as well as impactful for the follow-up behavior of evaluators (Roe & Ester, 1999).
Consequently, this thesis research proposes that values of every individuals would be influenced by the environment they dwell in which permanently form an everlasting state and moreover, impact their decision making depending on the different codes of conduct. Besides, the research would particularly focus on the discussion of work-related values according the main purpose addressed previously.
2.1.3 Work-related value & influence factors
Work value is a term relevant to the achievement or goal of occupation, and more of a demand derived from the inner of individuals and the attribute or nature people pursuing for while engaging in work-related activities which could as well represent the desire individuals eager for (Super, 1970). Apparently, the term means the attitude toward general occupation instead of that to the specific ones and furthermore, these mindsets are accumulated from gradual socialization (Wollack, 1971). However, one of
10
the domestic scholars defines that work value is the value intention reacted by employees toward specific jobs, meaning, affiliated norm, ethic and behavioral standard (吳聰賢, 1983). As a result, both overseas and domestic scholars have their claims on the definition of work-related value, which are currently still on the debate and not yet delimit to a conclusion.
When it comes to dealing with the factors that would have a significant impact on work values, we could talk about numerous elements such as age, gender, or education level and so forth in the territory of employee attribute. On the other aspect, the quality, salary, annual salary or income of the occupation itself would also create effectiveness to the work values possessed by every individuals.
In terms of gender, female tends to consider more about the guarantee, stability, sense of security, and availability of their occupations (洪瑞斌、劉兆明，2003). On the opposite side, male has the tendency to fulfill their ideality as well as career success while female hopes to establish social relationship and to gain economic independence throughout working experience and ultimately to achieve stability in work (黃同圳，
1993).
For the age aspect, it is whether the occupation is interesting or not matters the most for applicants, but there are still some surveys claim with trivial different results (Harpaz, 1990); Employees above age forty-five place more importance on inner value of occupation compare that to employees under age twenty-five (劉博民，1990). For instance, employees above age 50 attach more focus on social position within the company or organization (段宜廷，1999). What is more, not only family background could make a profound impact on work values of young applicants, but also their previous working experiences, like working part-time in convenient store, bubble tea
11
shop and so forth (Loughlin & Barling, 2001).
In the aspect of educational level, people with higher educational level less consider about the stability of their occupation or promotion opportunity as they acquire more confidence and assurance on their working capability, and on the contrary, they place more significance on hours of duty (Lincoln & Kallegerg, 1990). Besides, people with higher education received tend to care more about work independence instead of focusing on building social relationship or weaving connection with their colleagues (Lincoln & Kallegerg, 1990).
2.1.4 Job Engagement
The term “job engagement” is very first proposed by Lodahl and Kejner (1965), who defines as an importance of one identifies his or her occupation or being satisfied with one’s self-image correspond with the job, and in addition, points out that job engagement is the degree of job performance influencing personal dignity (Lodahl &
Kejner, 1965). Under the circumstance before stating this definition is that job engagement is a work-related value developed by experiencing the early socialized process. To be more precise, if an individual fail to convert his or her work value, job engagement then would not be changed as well along with the change of work (Lodahl
& Kejner, 1965).
Nevertheless, other scholars believe that the definition of job engagement, defined by Lodahl and Kejner creates a contradiction and confusion between terms like job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation with job engagement (Lawler & Hall, 1970). Intrinsic motivation relates to when ones strive for performing eminently in occupation in the condition of acknowledging a payback or reward in advance (Lawler, 1969). Therefore,
12
when one achieves a sense of self-growth, yet demonstrate decent performance within the organization, the momentum that accelerates this behavior is intrinsic motivation, which is what Lawler and Hall regard the definition addressed by Lodahl and Kejner manage to represent (Lawler & Hall, 1970 ). Also, job satisfaction, job expectation and actual satisfaction all three terms have positive correlation. The smaller the difference between the three terms are, the higher job satisfaction would be. However, job involvement is still essential whether the occupation plays an important role to his or her self-image or not (Lawler & Hall, 1970).
Another scholar, Kanungo thinks that the previously explained definitions remain extensively broad so he separates and categorizes the term “engagement” into two sections, which are job involvement and work engagement (Kanungo, 1982).
According to Kanungo (1982), job involvement occurs under particular working environments. On the contrary, work engagement only occurs under general working environments. He then defined the previous term originated from one acknowledging his or her current occupation as meaningful or expected job, and however, the latter term is defined as the importance work plays in one’s life which is the product functioned after the course of cultural limitation as well as socialization (Kanungo, 1982). By comparing both terms and differentiating them, job engagement is movable as the level of dedicating into work alters, needing and satisfaction level increase.
Consequently, job engagement would be enlarged (Kanungo, 1982).
2.1.5 Turnover
The term, turnover in human resources means the departure of current occupation with the termination of contract with the company or organization. Normally, there are
13
two types of turnover in the field of human resources, the first one is involuntary turnover or the so called dismissal. This term can be described as an employee repelling or being laid off by the organization or company currently work for at the moment when they fail to profitably run business operation or management tasks. The second term is voluntary turnover, which apparently means an employee willing to leave his or her position within an organization or company due to personal reasons or other external factors.
What is more, the term could also be translate into an action of employee, who receive dollar salary voluntarily and officially terminate his or her identity within the company or organization (Mobley, 1982). Turnover represents an individual confirms a negative decision to his or her current occupation after a period of consideration which means the individuals completely break away from the benefit and duty assigned by the occupation (余杏容，1977).
Types of turnover categorized as following definitions (曹萃栩，1984):
1) Voluntary turnover - Employee decides to make departure from the company due to personal reasons, such as, relocation, advanced studies, and so forth. Moreover, Influences involving organization-related factors are the dissatisfaction of salary, welfare, poor relationship with chief or director and other related issues could also lead to employee seeking for leaving the organization. Overall, this behavior is regarded as “resignation.”
2) Involuntary turnover – Employee unwillingly or having no other choice but forced to dismiss from the organization or company due to organizational decision, such as lay off or manpower reduction belong to this type of situation.
14
According to this thesis paper, the mentioned “turnover” type is classified as voluntary turnover which millennial applicants make their decision for leaving 85℃
brand coffee company owing to their personal reason or the unstable work values.
Todor (1979) claims the term “turnover” should be viewed from the point of view of organization which further sorts out two types of turnover sections (Dlato & Todor, 1979).
1) Dysfunctional turnover: The situation could be depicted as when an employee is willing to leave the company and however, the organization has the intention to retain this talent because losing an elite employee would result in disadvantages or bringing down organization’s performance. For instance, a veteran employee of 85
℃ coffee shop decides to leave and heading for other company because of better paid. But viewing from the company itself, losing this experienced talent could lead to poor human resource management as well as down fall of service performance.
Therefore, the company possesses high intention to manage to retain this elite worker for the sake of benefit of the organization.
2) Functional turnover: On the contrary, the term “functional turnover” means the
organization has no intention of retaining employees who are willing to leave the company because these types of employees perform poorly in engaging their working positions. To simply put, these types of employees are evaluated as poor human resources who could bring negative impact to organizational effectiveness.
15
2.1.6 Turnover intention
The term represents the attitude or overall performance inclines depart current working environment (e.g. organization, company, etc.) to search for other working opportunity (Miller, 1979). To be more precise, it is a series of measurement or evaluation before employees actually execute the behavior of resigning his or her position (Miller, 1979).
Mobley (1978) proposes a turnover model, which represents turnover intention is the independent variables of actual turnover behavior. The intensity of individual’s turnover intention would affect how his or her turnover behavior perform.
The following model is excerpted from Mobley (1978) turnover model:
Figure 2. Turnover Intention Model
Source: Mobley, W.H. (1978). “An evaluation of precursors of hospital employee turnover”, Journal of Applied Psychology, 63(4), p.410
Age & Annual salary
Job satisfaction
Notion of turnover
Intention of seeking other occupation
Possibility of searching for occupation
Turnover intention Turnover behavior
16
Mobley (1979) further induces seven factors that have direct influences and correlation with turnover intention instead of job satisfaction in accordance with
scholars’ research aiming at turnover intention factors.
1) Population statistical factors and characteristics 2) Overall working satisfaction
3) Organizational and working environmental factors: salary, promotion or relationship with colleagues
4) Occupational content factors: Satisfaction toward the work itself and the process 5) External factors: Financial condition
6) Occupational behavior: Blue-collar and white-collar have different turnover intention
7) Behavioral willingness, organizational commitment and job involvement