Mission attachment as a component of organisational job embeddedness in the trade union sector of South Africa

Abstract

The retention of human resources is a challenge faced by modern organizations. The organization and personal cost for an organization is high. Employee retention is therefore important and failure to address retention issues is likely to have a negative long term impact of organizational performance. This study focused on the addition of mission attachment as a component construct of the job embeddedness construct. The main sample included the trade union sector of South Africa together with a control group from the for profit sector. The results showed that mission attachment was positively linked to organizational job embeddedness in terms of organizational fit and sacrifice. The statistical results for this relationship between the variables were consistent for each level of mission attachment. The results for the control group showed an inconsistent relationship between the different construct with the conception of the ‘mission’ as the financial mission of the organization. The results were supported by the theoretical literature on the subjects of mission attachment and organizational job embeddedness. The study concludes that mission attachment can be included as a component of organizational job embeddedness for social and nonprofit organizations. Recommendations for future research include the testing of mission attachment across other different sectors of organizations in the social and nonprofit sphere. Other recommendation for organizational embeddedness is the inclusion of other variables like socio-political factors that have an influence on an employee’s attachment levels.