Research On Voluntary Employee Turnover Intention: An Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior

With the advance of market economy, breakdown of traditional inflexible employment system, constant changes in industrial structures and increase of internal and external uncertainties facing organizations, Voluntary Employee Turnover (VET) is becoming more and more common. It is of great significant for organizations to attract and retain excellent employees and motivate them to achieve their most potential.Based on previous literature, this study summarizes and critiques major Voluntary Employee Turnover models and further proposes to explore this issue from the perspective of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A survey of 164 samples empirically tests and verifies the relationships between organizational commitment, job satisfaction, perceived behavior control, subjective norm and turnover intention. In addition, this study finds that organizational commitment mediates the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention. Moreover, further analysis reveals that perceived behavior control and subjective norm moderate relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intention.This study has three major conclusions.1) Organizational commitment has more power in explaining turnover intention than job satisfaction does.2) Perceived behavior control and subjective norm moderate the linkage between organizational commitment and turnover intention.3) Employees' past turnover has a major impact on future turnover whereas other demographic factors do not exert significant effect.This study applied the Theory of Planned Behavior to exploring the complicated phenomenon of Voluntary Employee Turnover. One major advantage of such an effort is to transfer micro socio-economical factors into individual perception and norm, thereby largely reducing the complexity of model operationalization and increasing its explanatory power.It is crucial for organizations to figure out why employees quit and the major antecedents. Practices of turnover management should vary according to the specific causes and types. In that sense, this study contributes to helping Chinese companies form and execute more appropriate turnover policies.