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Preventing Knowledge Loss When Employees Expect to Leave intention, however, we did not find a negative but a positive effect on frequency of sharing knowledge. Here, PSS did not have a moderating influence. These results have implications for theory as well as for practice, which will be discussed in the following. 4.6.1. Theoretical implications First of all, the results of the present study demonstrate that turnover intention does not only predict actual turnover (Mobley 1977; Mobley, Griffeth, Hand, & Meglino, 1979; Steers & Mowday, 1981), but that the intention to voluntary (as well as the expectation to involuntary) leave also has very specific behavioral consequences. As noted by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), intentions toward an act or behavior are distinct from that act or behavior itself. And, based on our results, we propose that they can have other consequences as that act or behavior as well, and therefore merit more consideration and investigation. Moreover, results show that the well established distinction between voluntary and involuntary turnover (Gupta & Jenkins, 1991; Hulin, Roznowski, & Hachiya, 1985; Shaw et al., 1998) is not only relevant when actual turnover is considered, but also prior to the actual leaving of the organization, that is, at a point when voluntary turnover is only intended or a future involuntary turnover is expected. Typically, in the literature, the distinction is made to investigate precursors and predictors of turnover, such as HR strategies (Shaw et al., 1998), to investigate the relationship between performance and turnover, pursuing questions like whether voluntary turnover harms the organization and whether the right ones are let go (Wells & Muchinsky, 1985), or to investigate effects of different forms of turnover on subunit performance (McElroy et al., 2001). We have extended this distinction to turnover intention and expectation. Results have shown that when employees concern themselves with leaving the organization and looking for a new job, it makes a difference if employees have the choice to do so – or not. When employees think about leaving, but it is within their own control, they 154
Preventing Knowledge Loss When Employees Expect to Leave behave very differently with respect to knowledge sharing than when they expect to be forced to go. This is an important addition to the literature. Furthermore, the finding that turnover intention had a positive effect on knowledge sharing was surprising, and it merits further reflection and investigation. Several possible explanations for this result can be thought of. One explanation is that there is a variety of reasons why employees intend to leave, and eventually voluntary leave, and not all of them are associated with the organization. Reasons might be a more attractive job offer, the wish for further education or a change of profession, health reasons, or family commitments (Dalton, Krackhardt, & Porter, 1981; McElroy et al., 2001). Mobley (1982) made the distinction between push and pull factors for turnover, whereas Dalton and colleagues (1981) differentiated between controllable versus unavoidable turnover. It might be the case that in the present study, employees were mainly intending to leave due to pull factors or unavoidable reasons that are not related to the organization. When employees have been treated well by the organization and are satisfied with their job, but are for other reasons thinking about leaving, they might actually have “a bad conscience”, and might want to relief it through some form of compensation. Social exchange theory, for example, would posit that employees might even feel an obligation to show extra efforts as they will cause the organization a lot of costs with their voluntary turnover. Thus, employees with higher turnover intention might, depending on the reasons for their intention, share more knowledge. Accordingly, future studies might want to specify in a more detailed manner not only if employees intend to leave (or if they expect to leave involuntarily), but furthermore why they want to leave, differentiating between push and pull factors. On a different note, our results strengthen the importance of supervisors in teams and yield direct support for supervisors’ influence on their subordinates’ knowledge sharing. Whereas other studies (Bock et al., 2005; Cabrera et al., 2006; Zárraga & Bonache, 2005) 155
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Knowledge Transfer in Teams and Its
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Table of Contents Contents Acknowle
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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements T
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Acknowledgements Last but not least
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General Introduction and of older w
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General Introduction in the smooth
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Outline Outline The core of the pre
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Outline on knowledge sharing, as we
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Knowledge, Knowledge Management, an
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Multilevel Investigation of Anteced
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