Abstract:
The rate at which employees encounter changes in today’s businesses world is greater
than it has ever been before. Career adaptability, which has been shown to be a key
resource for dealing with change, has therefore become an essential requirement for
career as well as organisational success. However, although the positive outcomes that
are associated with career adaptability are well established, it is still not clear how this
construct influences the turnover intentions of individuals. This study therefore sought to
address this gap by assessing the relationship between career adaptability and turnover
intention within a particular research context. Furthermore, drawing from the social
exchange theory, the study sought to test the moderating effect of perceived
organisational support (POS) on the relationship between career adaptability and turnover
intention.
175 knowledge workers that are employed in the insurance sector participated in the
quantitative research study. Pearson’s correlation and the Hayes PROCESS technique
were employed to test the relationships between the observed constructs as well as the
moderating effects of POS. The findings suggest that there is no relationship between
career adaptability and turnover intentions. As initially hypothesised, POS has a significant
and negative association with employee turnover intention. In addition, it was found that
POS does not moderate the relationship between career adaptability and turnover
intention.
This work enriches the literature by contributing further findings that provide some insight
into how these two constructs interact in a particular context. Furthermore, this study
provides further evidence on the role of social exchange resources in mitigating turnover.
Lastly, these findings contribute to the literature by providing insight on the turnover
behaviour of knowledge workers who are considered to be a key resource in the current
knowledge economy. The insights obtained in this study can be utilised by businesses as
input for making investment decisions related to cultivating career adaptability as well as
developing turnover management strategies
