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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
2010) for sustained competitive advantage achievement efforts of organization. For these
reasons researchers have long been concerned with the issues and problems encountered
by employee turnover in the organization.
In the developed countries the importance of human capital and their retention in the
organization has been recognized vastly (Morrison & Robinson, 1997) but in the under
developed countries like Pakistan the research on the turnover intentions on the part of
employee has not gained much importance. Therefore it is very necessary to address the
factors that influence employee‘s intent to leave the organization.
Compensation and turnover intentions have been the focus of developing countries
keeping in mind the economic factor of poverty but the least attention has been paid to
the contextual factors like job satisfaction and organizational environment. These
concerns in Pakistani context urged us to analyze the role of job satisfaction,
organizational environment and career growth opportunities in employee‘s intent to leave
or stay in the organization.
2. Literature Review
Cotton and Tuttle (1986) stated turnover intention as an individual‘s estimated
probability to leave the organization. A conscious willingness to seek for other
alternatives in other organization depicts the individual‘s intent to leave (Tett & Mayer,
1993). Actual turnover increases as intention to leave the organization increases (Mobley,
1977). Therefore, intent to leave has been recognized as a final cognitive variable having
an immediate cause effect on actual turnover.
Productivity as measured through performance and profit margin has been seen as
decreasing through employee turnover and the turnover intentions in an organization
(Eriksen, 2010). For top management CEO turnover can create succession planning
problems (Cao, Maruping, & Takeuchi, 2006). Turnover can also bring disastrous
impacts in the organization in the form of not only less productivity but also in the form
of negative psychological impacts on the survivors in the organization. These
psychological impacts can include low performance, less commitment and decreased
fairness (Maertz et al., 2010).
Turnover intentions on the part of employee have been studied by the researchers with
the multifaceted aspects (Samad, 2006) regarding human as the important organizational
asset. There are many factors that contribute to the employee‘s decision to leave the
organization including the attitudinal, behavioral and organizational factors (Samad,
2006). Researchers also identified work related issues, personal, external and job related
factors that play an important role in employee‘s decision of retention or leaving the
organization. Demographic variables have been found related to turnover intentions of
employees (Cohen, 1993).
Firstly, personal factors like organizational identity, commitment, wages, and internal
promotion policies can contribute in employees‘ decision to leave (Cole & Bruch, 2006).
Higher the organizational identity for an employee, lower will be turnover intentions.
Similarly, if wages are high with favorable organizational policies then it can predict
lower turnover ratios (Batt, Colvin, & Keefe, 2002). Internal career advancement
opportunities perceived by the individual have been seen lowering turnover intentions
(Batt et al., 2002). Personal traits and demographics have also been found related with
employee‘s intentions to leave the organization. These factors include, age, sex, martial
status and income. Research has shown more intentions leave the organization in young
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 46
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9