Causal factors that influence turnover intent in a manufacturing organisation

Abstract

South Africa is experiencing a shortage of skills in key industries and many organisations have listed the retention of staff as a key objective in their annual sustainability reports. The factors that affect an employee’s intent to turnover have received greater attention as a study field of late but the literature is not all in agreement on the principal factors that influence an employee’s decision to leave an organisation. Many authors suggested that more empirical evidence are necessary to validate the significance of the identified precursors of employee turnover. Prince (2001) and other contributing authors postulated a causal model that tries to explain the complex interactions between the principal constructs that influence the job satisfaction and organisational commitment of an employee, ultimately leading to the employee’s decision to stay at the organisation or turnover. A Structural Equation Modelling technique was applied to the survey data gathered from a South African organisation to validate its fit to the postulated causal relationships defined in Prince’s (2001) model. Many of causal relationships could be validated for the company under study but this study had to conclude as so many other authors has done before that more empirical research is necessary to test the principal constructs of labour turnover as this research could not confirm all the factors postulated by Prince (2001). Copyright