The moderating effect of perceived organisational support on the relationship between career adaptability and turnover intention of knowledge workers

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