The Mechanism Of Impacts Of Job Embeddedness On Voluntary Turnover In China

With the rapid change of technology and business environment, knowledge has become the primary factor to gain core strengths, achieve success and accumulate wealth for an enterprise. Humans as knowledge carrier and innovative body have become a rare resource that enterprises are competing for. Attracting, retaining and motivating employees with competency are the most important task for managers. The truth is that employees leave organizations frequently in the free-flowing and highly competitive labor market though managers come up with a variety of methods to retain them. The voluntary turnover of employees not only causes economic losses to the employee and enterprise, but also wastes the resources of the society. In view of this, the academics have being studied the topic of preventing and predicting employee turnover for a long time. Since the organization balance model was proposed by March and Simon, many scholars have tried to explain the turnover based on the model. However, recent studies have shown that the actual explanation of this model is unsatisfactory. Researchers turned their attention to the non-organization and non-emotional factors. The job embeddedness theory proposed by Mitchell and Lee is more effective in predicting turnover in the Europe and the United States. Nevertheless, through combing the literature, we found that at least three aspects on this theory needed to be enriched:First, the theory stems from the European and American context and whether it can be applied to other social contexts still remains to be answered. What kind of cultural characteristics exist in terms of the meaning and its structure? In order to answer these questions, more cross-cultural studies and empirical tests in a variety of social backgrounds are needed.Second, the original measurement tools of job embeddedness have obvious cultural imprint. Some of the dimensions and items are not suitable for other cultural situations. Because of the differences in cultures and national conditions between Eastern and Western countries, it is an imperative task for localization studies to develop a measurement tool that suits the characteristics of China's system, traditions and cultures.Third, as a new theory, it is an important task to test its predictive power, identify the influencing factor, identify its relationship with the other organization behavior (OB) and explore the mechanism. So, the paper will study the relationship of the job embeddedness with other OB variables with empirical analysis in the Chinese context and test the predicted effect of job embededness on turnover and mechanism to enrich the empirical research.On account of the above deficiencies and limitations of the research about job emdeddedness theory, the paper carries four specific studies as supplementation. The aim of the paper is, on one hand, to make the meaning and structure clear in the Chinese context and develop an operable and suitable measurement tool. On the other hand, the paper aims to test the forecast effectiveness on turnover and clarify its role in the individuals' leaving decision in the oriental background. The specific contents of the four studies are as follows:(1) In order to test the general application of job embeddedness theory and explore the meaning and structural characteristics in the Chinese context, the paper designed an interview outline based on the pervious literature and conducted in-depth interviews with 15 employees. Based on the grounded theory and qualitative research method such as open coding, the findings show:First, the three attachment power including link, fit, and sacrifice still can cover the relationship between individual and organization in the Chinese context. Second, the organization dimension of job embeddedness is still manifested clearly in the Chinese context. So, the binding force of departure of in-job embeddedness exists in both Chinese and American contexts. Third, the community dimension of job embeddedness is unobvious. Unlike European and American employees, neighborhood relationship and community environment affects the work and leaving decisions of Chinese employees in a lesser degree. Instead, the urban and regional factor, family factor and parental and relative factor affect the job selection and leaving decision significantly. Therefore, the paper revises the content of community dimension, renames it as the regional dimension and the corresponding first-order as regional links, regional fit and regional sacrifice.(2)To further validate the location structure and content of job embeddedness, as well as to develop a measurement tool for Chinese context, the paper:firstly collected the measuring items through using the method of open questionnaire survey to MBA students; secondly conducted coding, classifying, combining and statistic analysis of the items, and then selected 25 items that were most representative of the contents of six dimensions according to the frequency and vesting of the items and then developed an initial scale of job embeddedness in the Chinese version; thirdly, through a pre-survey of 234 employees from two companies, tested the reliability and validity of the initial scale on the basis of item analysis, correlation analysis and exploratory factor analysis, revised the initial scale and developed a formal scale including 23 items; and finally, further tested the reliability and validity of Chinese version scale, and versified the second six factor model of job embeddedness on the basis of confirmatory factor analysis through a formal survey of 486 employees from five companies.(3)Given that the mechanism of job embeddedness is unclear and the relevant research is lacking, on the basis of preliminary case study, the paper constructed a theoretical model including organization justice-job embeddedness-turnover intention based on the attachment theory. The paper discussed the impact of employee cognitive organization justice on turnover and tested the transmission effect of job embeddedness in the above relationship. The paper aims to find the answer to how the organization affects turnover and the mechanism of job embeddedness. To test the theoretical model, the paper conducted two formal survey. Through analyzing the data of 518 samples, the findings show that:employee cognitive distributive justice and procedural justice relate negatively to turnover intention significantly; organizational embeddedness relates negatively to turnover intention significantly; and organizational embeddedness fully mediates the relationship between distributive justice and turnover intention and the relationship between procedural justice and turnover intention.(4)In order to explain the employee leaving thinking and better understand the mechanism of job embeddedness, the paper improves at least three aspects of previous studies. First, a longitudinal study design is better at testing the predictive validity of organization justice and job embeddedness on turnover than a cross-sectional study design. Second, it is closer to reality and avoids the deviation between willingness and behavior by using the actual leaving behavior as outcome variable. Third, it can find the relationship among variables and the effect of different characteristics or preferences accurately by considering the contingent effect of equity sensitivity. Based on the above considerations, the paper conducted three surveys in a year and obtained relevant data from 351 employees of six service companies. Hierarchical regression analyses show that:distributive justice and procedural justice relate positively to job embeddedness.; job embeddedness is an effective predictor of voluntary turnover; job embeddedness fully mediates the relationship between distributive justice and turnover; and equity sensitivity moderates the relationship between procedural justice and job embeddedness such that procedural justice has a stronger positive effect on embeddedness for benevolent individuals than for entitled individuals.