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Article Excerpt
Completed questionnaires from 223 organizational members were analyzed to test the extent to which career plateaus were positively associated with intentions to leave and that structure and content plateaus explained unique variation in turnover intentions after considering job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job search behavior, and several demographic characteristics. Findings supported both of these hypotheses. The authors also found that career plateaus influenced turnover intentions differently than job satisfaction and commitment in that plateaus directly influenced intentions rather than being mediated through job search behaviors.
Keywords: career plateau; turnover; intent to leave; turnover model
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When people decide to voluntarily leave an organization, the overall effectiveness of the organization may decrease for several reasons (Horn & Griffeth, 1995). First, the organization loses the knowledge that the departing employees possess. Second, the organization must expend time, money, and resources to recruit and select replacements. Third, these same investments in time, money, and resources must be made to train those replacements. In the ideal situation, the effort and resources to recruit and train new employees are well spent when the replacements' performance exceed the performance of those who have gone. Nonetheless, it is feasible that the replacements are not as effective as those who voluntarily left.
In an effort to overcome the challenges and ameliorate the risks associated with these departures, studies have been conducted for decades to determine why employees voluntarily leave organizations (e.g., Bluedorn, 1982; March & Simon, 1958; Price, 1977). Although each employee, undoubtedly, has unique reasons for leaving an organization that include pay concerns, social support concerns, job stress, and limited promotion opportunities (Price, 2001), findings have indicated that the chain of events leading to turnover are triggered by unfavorable affective perceptions one has toward the job (e.g., job satisfaction) and the organization (e.g., organizational commitment; Bluedorn, 1982; Griffeth, Steel, Allen, & Bryan, 2005). These unfavorable perceptions influence turnover intentions, job search activities, and, ultimately, turnover. This basic framework has guided several studies and several attempts have been made to make sense of these studies, using meta-analytic techniques (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Horn & Griffeth, 1995; Steel & Ovalle, 1984). Despite this abundant body of knowledge, the success of these studies might be questioned because only a small percentage of variance is shared among the predictor variables studied, turnover intentions, and turnover (Griffeth et al., 2000; Griffeth et al., 2005).
Steel (2002) argued that the persistent failure of studies to predict significant portions of turnover intentions and turnover has arisen from (a) the methods used and (b) the affective antecedents analyzed. Several recent efforts have addressed these issues. Methodologically, Griffeth et al. (2005) have worked to improve the measurement of an individual's market cognitions by testing the validity and reliability of a multidimensional employment opportunity index, arguing that an individual's understanding of employment opportunities is intricately linked to the job search behaviors that are commonly seen in studies of turnover. In an effort to expand the variables included in studies of turnover, Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, and Erez (2001) introduced the idea of job embeddedness, a variable representing the organizational and community forces that tend to prevent voluntary turnover. Their initial empirical findings indicated that the concept of embeddedness did explain significant incremental variance in turnover after controlling for traditional predictors (e.g., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). In keeping with research efforts such as Mitchell et al. (2001) to find new affective antecedents that better explain the variance in turnover, this study explored the extent to which career plateaus might be an antecedent of turnover. Before a detailed discussion of career plateaus and the career plateau-turnover link is discussed, an overview of the extant turnover research is discussed.
Turnover
Turnover research can be traced back to the efforts of March and Simon (1958), Mobley (1977), and Price (1977). Although differences exist across the conceptual models that each researcher puts forth, individuals' turnover decisions, generally, have been characterized as rational choices individuals make regarding their current job and organization (Steers & Mowday, 1981). Moreover, insights into these decisions are gained by understanding an individual's job satisfaction and commitment (Mobley, 1977; Steers & Mowday, 1981). Individuals who are dissatisfied with their current employment have thoughts of quitting. Based on these thoughts and their commitment to the organization, individuals compare their present job to real and perceived alternatives. If the evaluation reveals that the present job is more favorable than the alternatives, individuals are likely to accept the status quo and any thoughts of quitting would likely diminish. If evaluation leads individuals to believe that the current job is worse than the alternatives, individuals would tend to increase their desire to leave and would likely pursue those alternatives, eventually leaving.
With this central theme common across many of the models trying to explain turnover decisions, efforts have diverged as researchers have attempted to isolate more specific factors that influence job satisfaction and subsequent turnover decisions. Variables studied fall in three general areas, namely, individual, organizational, or environmental characteristics. Individual characteristics relate to the attributes of the employees themselves, like marital status or gender, that may influence turnover intentions and turnover (e.g., Bauer, Erodogan, Liden, & Wayne, 2006). In contrast, organizational characteristics refer to the interface between individual workers and organizations (e.g., Bauer et al., 2006). Environmental characteristics are those that affect the organization as a whole and the ease of movement an individual has between organizations (e.g., Steel, 1996).
Several attempts have been made to synthesize these efforts, using meta-analytic techniques. Steel and Ovalle (1984) analyzed the results across 34 studies, finding that attitudinal variables such as turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment accounted for only 50% of the variability in turnover. Most recently, Griffeth et al. (2000) incorporated 500 correlations from more than 40 studies published in the 1990s with those that had been analyzed by Hom and Griffeth (1995). Their analysis suggested that the basic framework guiding turnover research might be appropriate, identifying several significant predictors of turnover intentions and turnover. Of these, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job search, comparison of alternative, withdrawal cognitions, and quit intentions were the best predictors. Consistent with the findings of Steel and Ovalle, they concluded that about half of the variance in employees' withdrawal decisions has been left unexplained.
Many have tried to better understand this unexplained turnover intentions and decisions, suggesting that the traditional models are narrowly focused on...
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