A Study On The Factors Affecting The Turnover Of Knowledge Workers

The emergence of knowledge worker is a milestone in the last half of twenty century, and it has absorbed the attention of management scholars around the world. They unanimously believe that the biggest challenge of human resource management in 21 century is how to manage knowledge workers effectively. In domestic, the research is still in the early stage. For Chinese firms who are eager to transform and upgrade themselves, the problem has becomes an urgent and critical task. Therefore, the paper focuses on one of core research questions:what factors do impact the turnover of knowledge workers?The majority of domestic extant literature is based on western employee turnover model, which focuses more on general factors and less on specific factors. by reviewing numerous existing literature, the current paper summarizes the characteristics and classification of knowledge workers and the idiosyncratic dimension of oriental culture, and establish a model of knowledge worker turnover. We test the model using data from security industry in Shanghai and come up with some significant conclusions.In sum, four research questions are examined:First, the definition and classification of knowledge workers are discussed. Existing research mostly draw on the classical definition of Drucker, that is, "people who master and utilize symbol and concept using knowledge and information", and analyze the concept of knowledge process and learning of knowledge workers. More or less, these research neglect the idiosyncracy of knowledge workers, such as innovation, independence, collective learning, and enterprise culture. By reviewing extant literature comprehensively, the paper grasps the core characteristic of "innovation", and concludes six characteristics of knowledge workers. Furthermore, we classify it into two types: exploratory and exploitative knowledge workers.Second, the measurement of these characteristics of knowledge workers is developed. Being complicate, existing literature seldom measures the characteristics quantitatively, and most of them are merely descriptive and anecdotical. It is clear that so-called "knowledge worker" and "knowledge work" cannot be scutinized unless it can be measured and differentiated from non-knowledge workers appropriately. As a result, we develop related measurement by interview and theory development.Third, we examined the different factors which impact the turnover of different kinds of knowledge workers and non-knowledge worker. Extant research tend to continue the tradition of general employees’turnover, and transit these factors to the context of knowledge workers. In spite of their contribution to the topic, it is not enough for today knowledge workers have accounted for over 50 per cent of the whole employees. If we cannot identify the characteristics of knowledge workers, the design of this kind of research is problematic. It seems more proper that distinguish knowledge workers more carefully. For knowledge workers, the difference between exploitative and exploratory is by no means trivial. It is, however, neglected by extant literature.Four, the impact of enterprise culture on the turnover of knowledge workers is examined. Knowledge workers perform their jobs in organizations, but how the interaction between traditional culture and the new type of workers influences the turnover remains unknown. Most theories on employee turnover are developed in the context of Europe and America, but can they be applied in China uncritically? How do we embody the characteristics of oriental culture in the turnover?There are five innovations in the paper:(1)By scrutizing extant literature, we found six characteristics of knowledge workers, which can be divided into two dimensions, job and person characteristics. Job characteristics encompass innovation, complex and autonomy, and person characteristics include learning, career commitment, and equity. Among them, innovation is the core one, which lead to the other characteristics. Furthermore, although all knowledge workers need to be innovative, innovation can be classified into two types, exploitative and exploratory. From this perspective, the classification seems especially meaningful for firms. The value to firms varies from innovations to innovations. In the current context, the factors are different. Identifying the difference is significant for firms.(2)A model of employee turnover has been established, which is based on the basic factors, i. e., job satisfaction and organization commitment, and two extensions are proposed. One is the alignment of job and person characteristics are considered, and the moderate role of enterprise culture is added into the model. The other is different kinds of knowledge workers are compared. We use the data from security industry in Shanghai to test the model.(3)Although the basic factors impacting knowledge workers’turnover are the same as traditional emplyees, two dimensions of the enterprise culture act as important moderators, i.e., loyalty and power distance. We found the two dimensions moderate the influences of two basic factors on turnover significantly. Specifically, loyalty culture can lessen the negative influence of the factors on turnover. Power distance can lessen the negative influence of the job satisfaction on turnover, while it has not impact on organization commitment. These would be very important for human resource management of a firm.(4) With regard to the factors impacting job satisfaction and organization commitment, we found that neither job nor person characteristics, but the alignment of them matter. This encompasses the following findings: Firstly, the alignment between innovation and learning, equity has a strong impact on job satisfaction and organization commitment, but the alignment between innovateon and career commitment does not. Secondly, the alignment between job complex and learning influence job satisfaction and organization commitment significantly. Its alignment with career commitment only impact job satisfaction, but not organization commitment. Thirdly, the good alignment between job autonomy and career commitment, equity can lead to higher job satisfaction and organization commitment.(5) By comparing and contrasting exploitative and exploratory innovative employees, we found that the difference between the alignment of innovation and learning is trivial, but the relationship between innovation and career commitment get more critical. As with equity,In the end, we discuss the results and explain the theoretical and practical implications. Limitation and future research are proposed.