Last modified: 2018-08-07
Abstract
Background. Turnover has various implications for companies, groups and individuals. To be able to lessen turnover, turnover intention is one of the best predictors that can explain why employees want to leave their organization. One of the recent variables studied is organizational mobility preferences, which is one of the two components of boundaryless career attitudes. Organizational mobility preferences can be defined as the preferences of individuals to move from organizations to organizations. People with high organizational mobility preferences choose to go beyond the boundary of single employment by physically moving to other organizations. If the individual has such preferences, then it can be predicted that the individual has a desire to get out of his organization. It means that there is likely a relationship between organizational mobility preferences and turnover intention. Nevertheless, there is limited research that can explain the psychological process of the relationship between organizational mobility preferences and turnover intention. Affective commitment is predicted to mediate the relationship between organizational mobility preferences and turnover intention. Based on the organizational commitment conceptual model by Meyer and Allen, we propose that individuals that prefer to change organizations over time will find difficulties to identify themselves with their organization and do not enjoy their membership in the organization. This then results in the desire to change their company. To confirm this hypothesis, this study aims to examine the relationship between organizational mobility preferences and turnover intention mediated by affective commitment.
Methods. Using non-probability method, 178 employees (51.1% male, Mage = 26 years old) participate in the study. Participants fill the self-report questionnaire online, that is consisted of Boundaryless Career Attitudes Scale to measure organizational mobility preferences, Affective Commitment Scale to measure affective commitment, and Turnover Intention Scale to measure turnover intention. Data processing is done by using SPSS software through the help of PROCESS macro by Hayes
Results. The effect of organizational mobility preferences on turnover intention which mediated by affective commitment is analyzed using regression analysis with simple mediation model. The results show that organizational mobility preferences is a significant predictor of affective commitment, b = -.640, 95% BCa Cl [-.885, -.395]. The result also indicates that affective commitment is a significant predictor of turnover intention, b = -.231, 95% BCa Cl [-.297, -.165]. The organizational mobility preferences has a direct effect on turnover intention, b = .198, 95% BCa Cl [.069, .324]. The results also show that affective commitment partially mediated the relationship between organizational mobility preferences and turnover intention b = .346, 95% BCa Cl [.210, .481].
Conclusions. The results of this study are able to confirm the assumptions of the psychological process on how organizational mobility preferences can affect turnover intention partly through affective commitment. One of the reasons why employees with organizational mobility preferences will tend to leave their organization is because they do not have emotional identification with their organization. However, the partial mediation result shows that there might be other variables that can explain the relationship between organizational mobility preferences and affective commitment.
Added-Values. The results of this study provide more understanding related to the phenomenon of frequent turnover in the company, especially private companies. This study also implicated that if a company want to lower the level of the employee's intention to leave, then it is necessary to consider employees’ organizational mobility preferences and also strive to increase the affective commitment that they have.