The Relationships Among Leader-Member Exchange, Off-the-Job Embeddedness, and Turnover Intention

Employee turnover presents a myriad of challenges for organizations including the financial burden of replacing individuals, replacement skill sets and intellectual capital, loss of effectiveness and productivity, and acclimation to organizational values and cultures. The motivation for this study was that organizational leaders continue to have difficulty developing and retaining employees. Variables such as off-the-job embeddedness and leader-member exchange (LMX) may be related to job satisfaction and employee turnover intention. Understanding the roles of the aforementioned variables and their interactions can allow employers to ascertain and focus retention efforts in areas not traditionally related to work (i.e., promoting leisure activities, community involvement, home ownership, family oriented programs), thus mitigating the negative effects of voluntary turnover. The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to determine the extent to which employees with low off-the-job embeddedness and weak LMX may decrease job satisfaction and in turn increase turnover intention possibly increasing potential burdens for employers. Two multiple regression analyses and one moderated multiple regression analysis were performed in order achieve the purpose of this study. The moderated multiple regression analysis was performed to determine if off-the-job embeddedness moderates the relationship between LMX and turnover intention. The 170 participants of this study are members of the Tampa-St. Petersburg Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. Participants were invited to participate through solicitation on the group webpage, LinkedIn group page, and an announcement at a group monthly luncheon. The primary results from this study were: (a) higher levels of LMX associated with lower levels of turnover intention (&...