Effects of organizational commitment, job involvement, and organizational culture on the employee voluntary turnover process

In the field of tumover research, relationships between the employee and the employer have been investigated to detennine possible correlations between psychological antecedents such as organizational commitment and job involvement and subsequent organizational behaviors such as the voluntary tumover process (Porter, Crampon & Smith, 1976; Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979; O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986). Mowday, Porter and Steers (1982) state that organizational commitment is negatively related to the employee voluntary tumover process and is the best predictor of the voluntary tumover process. Mathieu and Zajac (1990) report in their meta-analysis of organizational commitment antecedents that the relationship between organizational commitment and job involvement was the largest observed. Another variable to be considered relative to organizational behaviors is a contextual one, the culture of the organization. Organizational culture may have a contextual effect on the relationship between organizational commitment and a behavior such as employee voluntary tumover (Randall, 1990).

The present study is designed to examine the relationships between employee organizational commitment, job involvement, the psychological contract, organizational culture and the process of employee voluntary tumover. Variables that will predict the probability of, and rate of, voluntary employee tumover process are determined.

Participants in this study are managerial and service employees of a large southwestern organization. The employees completed questionnaires and opinionnaires on the job site during paid working hours at the various geographical locations of the organization. Tumover was assessed each month for a period of six months after the initial administration of the above-mentioned questionnaires and opinionnaires. Survival analysis, specifically the Cox proportional hazard model, was used to assess the relationship of both the occurrence and the timing of the tumover process to the multiple predictors measured at one point in time.

Analyses of associations between survival time and qualitative and quantitative variables yield a predictive model for employee voluntary tumover containing the variable measure, Employee Perceived Obligation to the employer. There exists a significant negative association between the variable and the hazard of voluntary tumover. Demographic variables tested in a predictive model that proved to be significant are gender, age, ethnicity and salary. There is a significant negative relationship between the variables age and salary and the hazard of employee voluntary tumover. A positive association between the two variables gender and ethnicity and the hazard of tumover exists.