Definition of Turnover
In the organizational behavior field, turnover has been widely and frequently studied in the past 50 years. A lot of scholars have made significant contributions to the concept and construct of turnover. For example, Wanous, Strumpf, and Bedrosian (1979) identified two kinds of turnover: voluntary and involuntary turnover. Dalton, Todor and Krackhardt (1982) divided turnover into functional and dysfunctional turnover. According to Mobley (1977), turnover is defined as an employee works in an organization, through deep consideration after working for a period of time, the employee decided to leave the organization permanently.
Williams and Hazer (1986) viewed turnover as the act of an employee actually leaving the organization. Ferguson and Ferguson (1986) said turnover is the termination of the relationship between employers and employees, no matter the decision is made from which side. Hendrix, Robbins, Miller and Summers (1998) defined turnover as both employees’ voluntary and involuntary leaving the organizations permanently. In this research, turnover will be defined as the employees’ voluntary decision of leaving a company permanently.
Types of Turnover
Wanous, et al. (1979) classified turnover into two types. One is voluntary turnover and the other one is involuntary turnover. The former one referred to employees’ behavior of leaving the position or organization voluntarily due to organizational or personal factors, such as salary, promotion, health and so on. The latter one indicated that employees are forced by the organization to quit
permanently (e.g. dismissal or layoff). Most studies focused on the voluntary turnover for the reasons that this is the most commonly seen type of employees’
turnovers and that the factors influencing voluntary turnover can often be controlled by the organization (Morrell, Loan-Clarke, & Wilkinson, 2001). In addition, Abelson (1987) categorized employee turnover into avoidable and unavoidable. This categorization is more for an organization point of view. For avoidable turnover, organizations can always take measures to prevent or control it from happening, regardless of whether it is employee’s voluntary or involuntary turnover. As to unavoidable turnover, it refers to situations and conditions that cannot be easily controlled or avoid by the organization. The following figure showed some examples of the abovementioned categorization.
Turnover Process Model
The turnover process model in Figure 2.1. is the most commonly seen model developed by Mobley (1977). It demonstrated an individual’s mind process all the way till the actual turnover happened, from feeling dissatisfied with the current job, evaluating the pros and cons of quitting, searching for the alternatives, comparing options with the present job, having the intention to leave or stay, and finally made up his/her mind to quit or stay.
Figure 2.1. The employee turnover decision process. Adapted from “Intermediate linkages in the relationship between job satisfaction and employee turnover,” by Mobley, W.H., 1977, Journal of Applied Psychology, 62(2), p.238.
Later on, Mobley, Griffeth, Hand and Meglino (1979) revised and enriched the model by adding other related factors and control variables (refer to Figure 2.2.).
There are five features of this turnover process model: (a) Beside the differences among personal perception, expectation and values, the model included personal and occupational variables. (b) The perception and evaluation toward job opportunities are demonstrated. (c) The centrality of work values and interests relative to other values and interests, beliefs regarding non-work-related consequences of leaving or
staying, and contractual constraints are presented in the model. (d) The contribution to turnover of current job satisfaction, expected job attraction, and the attraction of attainable job alternatives are proposed. (e) Turnover intention is viewed as the immediate precursor of actual turnover, while impulsive behavior will weaken the relationship between them. This model is developed from the actual turnover behavior and traced all the way back to its antecedents.
Figure 2.2. A schematic representation of the primary variables and process of employee turnover. Adapted from “Review and conceptual analysis of the employee turnover process,” by Mobley, W. H., Griffeth, R. W., Hand, H. H., & Meglino, B.
M., 1979, Psychological bulletin, 86(3), p.493.
Turnover Intention
Over the past five decades, the turnover process model has been discussed in the field of organizational research. Other than the turnover process model developed by Mobley in 1977, there are a lot of research regarding the idea of turnover, the turnover process models and their antecedents. However, among all antecedents of turnover, turnover intention has been shown to be the best predictor among all other antecedents (Miller, Katerberg, & Hulin, 1979; Hom, Caranikas-Walker & Prussia, 1992). In the field of psychology, Fishbein and Ajzen (1977) once said that the best way to predict an individual’s behavior is to observe and measure his/her intention to perform that certain behavior. Because of these reasons, this study intends to measure turnover intention as the outcome variable.
Turnover intention and intention to leave (quit) are used as interchangeable terms for each other. Porter and Steers (1973) defined intention to leave as the withdrawal behavior of an individual when his/her expectations toward their work or organization are not met. Mobley (1977) defined intention to quit as an employee’s last stage of turnover decision process right before the actual turnover. Throughout the process, job satisfaction, searching for alternative jobs and the evaluation among alternatives and the current job are involved. In the research of Miller et al. (1979), intention to leave is defined as a comprehensive idea that includes an individual’s thought of leaving the current job, and seeking possible alternatives out of the organization. Williams and Hazer (1986) defined intention to quit as an individual’s intention, desire and plans to leave their job. To sum up the above definitions from previous studies, turnover intention is merely an individual’s intention to search for other job opportunities outside the current organization. The actual turnover has not happened yet at this stage. The individual will process through some related problems and questions (e.g., the idea of quitting, finding new jobs and evaluate all
alternative) then make a feasible and satisfying overall assessment. After all these been done, the actual turnover happened, which means leaving the position or organization permanently.
Antecedents of Turnover Intention
Demographic Factors. Generally speaking, personal factors, such as gender, age, marital status, education background, tenure, and job position, are variables that are related to turnover intention. According to previous research results, Marsh and Mannari (1977) and Weisberg and Kirschenbaum (1993) found that females had higher turnover rates than males.
Hayes (2015) found that age was negatively related to turnover intention. In other words, the older an individual is, the lower their turnover intention will be.
Studies also found that family responsibility, which is measured by an individual’s marital status and the number of his/her dependents, was related to turnover intention (Koh & Goh, 1995). For people who are single, their turnover intention tends to be higher, whereas those married employees and those with dependents have a lower intention to quit.
In addition, education background influences employees’ turnover intention.
However, the direction of the effect on turnover intention is inconclusive. Mobley (1982) found that education background was negatively related to turnover intention while Cotton and Tuttle (1986) indicated that the higher an individual is educated, the stronger turnover intention he/she has.
Work-Related Factors. Job satisfaction is the most commonly studied variable related to turnover intention. Research showed that it is one of the most immediate variables to predict an individual’s intention to leave an organization (Sousa-Poza &
significantly negatively related to turnover intention. In other words, if an employee is satisfied with his/her job, their turnover intention will be low (Porter & Steers, 1973; Price, 1977; Fogarty, Singh, Rhoads, & Moore, 2000; Sousa-Poza &
Hennebeger, 2004).
Organizational commitment is another important variable often used to predict turnover intention. Abundant research presented the result that organizational commitment is significantly and negatively related to turnover intention. That is, the less committed an employee is to their organization, the stronger their intention to quit the job permanently.
Still other minor factors affecting an employee’s intention to leave the organization. For example, if the work is less repetitive, the turnover intention will be lower; if the work provides an employee a larger room for autonomy, the employee will less likely leave the organization as well (Hackman & Lawler, 1971).
Also, regarding work performance, high performers in an organization have lower desire to quit their job (Dreher, 1982). Finally, an individual’s perception of job opportunities and alternatives is related to their turnover intention. If an employee perceived that there are lots of opportunities outside the company, he/she will have a higher intention to leave the job for the alternatives.
Career Plateau Definition of Career Plateau
Ference, Stoner and Warren (1977) considered career plateau to be a natural consequence of the organization structure development. When an individual reaches a point that the possibility of further promotion in the organization is low, he/she is defined as experiencing a plateau in his/her career. Later on Veiga (1981) extended the concept of career plateau to not only focusing on the vertical movement (promotion), but also the horizontal transfer within the organization. However, at this stage, career plateau is still focusing on an individual’s mobility in the organization. Feldman and Weitz (1988) proposed that employees might experience the increase of work responsibilities without actual promotion in the organization. In this case, those employees might still have the chance to grow and develop themselves; therefore, their self-perception of career plateau might be low. Likewise, employees might also be promoted in the organization with given new tasks or responsibilities. Hence, simply judging whether employees are plateaued through hierarchical movement in the organization is not sufficient. Based on these previous studies (Bardwick, 1986; Feldman & Weitz, 1988), Milliman (1992) developed a measurement with two dimensions (job content plateau and hierarchical plateau) to test an individual’s perception of his/her career status.
Antecedents of Career Plateau
Individual Factors. Individual factors are often the constraints or limitation of an individual’s mobility and development in the organization. Studies often showed that demographic variables often affect both subject and object career success. For example, Gattiker and Larwood (1990) discovered that people who are plateaued
logical that older people are more likely to have longer working years as well as the tenure in the organization. The longer they work the higher chance they have to be plateaued.
Education level is also a factor that can influence an employee’s mobility and development. Lorence and Mortimer (1985) pointed out that the higher education background an individual has the greater chance he/she will receive promotion.
Other than that, people who have higher education level are viewed as more capable of taking up additional responsibilities; therefore, result in the increase of their job content then lead to their growth. However, the level of education affects more significantly at the entry stage of one’s career. Throughout the time, the effect will become weaker as other factors such as experience will be more a determinant of an individual’s mobility in the organization.
Other personal factors such as motivation to learn, career exploration, career planning and job involvement, are also related to career plateau (Allen, Russell, Poteet, & Dobbins, 1999). Some scholars viewed them as the results that are affected by individuals’ personalities. The effects will influence an individual’s attitudes toward receiving new tasks, facing challenges or pursuing a higher rank in the organization and eventually causing he/she to be plateaued or not.
Organizational Factors. People facing career plateau is a commonly happened phenomenon caused by the traditional hierarchical structure of the organization. The funnel effect in an organization will naturally occur because of the fewer positions when employees are trying to pursue upper movement, (Near, 1980) not to mention that nowadays, there are more and more horizontal-organizational structures. With fewer hierarchical levels in an organization, employees might seriously confront hierarchical plateau. Moreover, as the upward movement is blocked, employees got stock at the same position and kept on doing the same jobs and task. This will also
cause the employees to be plateaued on the job content aspect.
Consequences of Career Plateau
The outcomes of career plateau can be both positive and negative. Some studies showed that employees who faced the career plateau are often the solid citizen with the organization. They are the one who make positive contribution to the company (Bardwick, 1986; Feldman & Weitz, 1988; Ference et al., 1977; Near, 1980;
Heilmann, Holt, & Rilovick, 2008). Most findings, however, indicate that career plateau generally has negative impacts on the organization (Allen et al., 1999;
Tremblay & Roger, 1993). For instance, the absenteeism of employees happened more often on plateaued ones compared with those still making progress in the organization. Plateaued employees are also less satisfied with their supervisors (Near, 1980, 1985). Other research results proposed that career plateau can also lead to low job satisfaction and organizational commitment; then result in dissatisfying work performance and eventually, lead to an increase of an individual’s turnover intention and actual turnover (Chao, 1990; Milliman, 1992; Tremblay, Roger, & Toulouse, 1995; Allen et al., 1999). Therefore, this study predicts the following:
Hypothesis 1: Career plateau will be positively significantly related to employees’ turnover intention.
The Moderating Effects of Career Anchor Profiles
From the previous research analyzed above, the effects of personal factors indeed seemed to happen on both career plateau and turnover intention (Feldman &
Weitz, 1988; Guan, Wen, Chen, Liu, Si, Liu, Wang, Fu, Zhang, & Dong, 2014).
However, few studies focus on the moderating effect of an individual’s personality or personal factors on the relationship between career plateau and turnover intention (Ettington, 1998; Lee, Huang, & Zhao, 2012; Wen & Liu; 2015). Some evidence was found that inventories used to test an individual’s vocational interest and biographical information blank could be fairly used to predict turnover intention (Porter & Steers, 1973). Individual factors such as personality were also included into the turnover process model (Mobley et al., 1979). Still other studies indicated that personal traits or work orientation do impact on turnover behavior (Steers &
Mowday, 1981; Williams & Hazer, 1986; Steel, 2004). Therefore, this study aims to use career anchors developed by Edgar H. Schein (1978) to investigate the influence of career-oriented factors on the relationship between career plateau and turnover intention.
Schein’s Career Anchors
Schein (1978) first had the idea of career anchors. He proposed that there is a factor within each individual’s career. The factor not only affects people’s career decision, but also forms the goals that they strive to achieve in their lives. This internal factor is called the career anchor. It is a self-image developed from people’s intelligence, knowledge, value and experiences. This concept will influence people’s expectation and preference when choosing their jobs. It is also the element that people will not give up even when facing a difficult choice.
Schein said that at the beginning of people’s career, their self-concepts are still
vague. This is the stage when they learn and develop themselves through their job and the organization they are in. They continuously experience and cultivate themselves so as to recognize what they are interested in, what are their motivation, what they valued the most in life and what advantages and KSAOs they possess.
After accumulating work experiences, they will have a higher decision-making power toward choosing their jobs. Then they keep on the learning and self-discovering process. When they are facing new tasks and challenges, they will have the opportunity to find out their potentials. Finally, the self-concept and understanding built up through the process will form a career anchor in their mind.
This anchor serves as the guide when people make critical decisions regarding their career. In this study, Schein presented five categories of career anchors, which are technical/functional competence, managerial competence, creativity, autonomy and security. Later, Schein in 1990 increase the career anchors into eight categories.
Meanwhile, managerial insights, such as types of jobs, compensation and benefits, and promotion, are also embedded into the descriptions. The eight categories are as follow:
Technical / Functional Competence. People with this type of anchor will not give up the opportunity to apply the skills they choose in that certain area. They like the feeling of being the experts in the field and will gain satisfaction from the technical or functional work they are doing. They can also enjoy managing others in that certain field. However, they will avoid general management position for that managing others is not the purpose of their career.
General Managerial Competence. People with this anchor tend to pursue higher level in the organization because position at a certain level enable them to put their efforts into managing cross functional departments and coordinate them for a
themselves to the organization and identify their work with the success of the organization.
Autonomy / Independence. People with this career never give up the chance to control over their own work. They want to feel free on what to do, how they do it and the pace of doing the job. They often choose self-employment or freelance for job because of the high autonomous.
Security / Stability. People with this anchor value the employment security above all other factors. Their top priority is to make sure the stability of their job in the organization. It can be either on financial or geographical aspects. This type of people is less concerned with the job content not the rank in the organization. They are willing to do whatever the employers ask to accept any arrangement as long as they secure and stabilize their job.
Entrepreneurial Creativity. People with this anchor desired to create an organization on their own. They want to overcome the obstacles with their ability and are willing to take up all the risk of establishing their enterprise. They might start with working in other people’s organizations to learn the skills needed and to assess future opportunities. However, they will leave the organization as soon as they feel that they are ready to handle the mission to set up their company.
Service / Dedication to a Cause. People with this anchor tend to pursue work opportunities that they think are of value and will make the world a better place.
They will search for jobs that solve the environmental problems, cure diseases with new products, create harmony in the world, and so on.
Pure Challenge. People who fall into this category like to find solutions to unsolved problems, to win over tough competitions and to conquer all difficulties and barriers. For them the crucial reason for them to pursue a job is to face challenges one after another, and successfully win out all of them. Once the
challenges stop existing, they felt bored about the work immediately.
Lifestyle. People who possess this anchor will never give up the situations that enable them to balance the personal needs, family demands and the requirement of their career. To them, a successful career is not simply about being promoted to a high level or earning a fortune, it’s more of an integration of every part of their life.
Therefore, the job they are searching for should be flexible enough to make arrangement whenever needed.
Career Anchor Profiles
Despite the fact that the original design of career anchors is to find out one dominant anchor out of eight for each individual, the researcher believed the
Despite the fact that the original design of career anchors is to find out one dominant anchor out of eight for each individual, the researcher believed the