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A Study Of Knowledge Workers Turnover And Its Impact On Enterprise Performance

Posted on:2009-06-15Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J X JinFull Text:PDF
GTID:2189360245998643Subject:Labor economics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The advent of the information economy era, making knowledge works to become an important carrier of enterprise knowledge, skills and innovative ability. Enterprise performance increasingly depends on intellectual capital and innovation capability. Knowledge workers are distinguished from other staff: they have a stronger self-worth pursuing and their performance is more related with their willingness; they have a high turnover tendency and play a more active role in labor markets; their departure often brings enterprise greater impact. How to retain knowledge workers and cope with the negative impact of their turnover is becoming an important subject in the domain of HRM. In recent years, research on employee turnover becomes a focus of HRM domain.However, what impact staff turnover brings to enterprises has not been sufficient researched either in theory and practice. This paper conducts an initial attempt on this issue. With a sample of knowledge workers, this paper studies how employee turnover impact on enterprise performance and presents some general advices of retaining knowledge workers and reducing the negative impact of their turnover.This study can be roughly divided into two phases. The first phase is the theoretical analysis and model building. Based an intensive literature review, this paper analyzes the key factors which influence knowledge workers to leave, and introduces four mediating variables between employee turnover and business performance, then establishes a conceptual model about the relation betweens knowledge works turnover and corporate performance. The second phase is empirical research. The author designs scale and questionnaire according the variables in the model; issues questionnaires through a variety of channels and collects samples widely from 11 cities and 15 industries; analyzes the relation between demographic variables and some endogenous variables such as turnover intention with Oneway-Anava method; tests and revises the conceptual model with structural equation model (SEM) software; and compares model result in different groups.The result presented by SEM software shows that the conceptual model is validated roughly. With the model fitting result and indices, the author revises some paths of the model. The fitting result of the revised model is favorable. The result of revised model reveals: between turnover intention and turnover behavior there is a sizable impact which haven't been explained by search behavior as a mediating variable, and search behavior may have multiple influence; it seems turnover intention and turnover behavior have inconsistent impacts on enterprise performance; two of the four mediating variables introduced between employee turnover and enterprise performance have been verified, which explained 50.1% of enterprise performance variance totally. The results of Comparative Analysis between groups show that turnover intentions of different types of employees have inconsistent impacts on enterprise performance through mediating variables, and the impacts of turnover intention and behavior of employees in different enterprises are inconsistent too.With the results of empirical research, this paper presents some general proposals of coping with the turnover of knowledge workers: decentralizing decision-making authorities to spur their work willingness; helping employees make their career planning and providing them with more opportunities for professional growth; setting up turnover management system to reemploy former employee; providing challenging and multiform works to inspire employee's enthusiasm; promoting teamwork and speeding knowledge backup to reduce the impact of knowledge workers'turnover on enterprise performance; investigating the actual situation of enterprise and employees to formulate diverse human resources policies.
Keywords/Search Tags:knowledge workers, turnover intention, turnover behavior, enterprise performance, structural equation modeling (SEM)
PDF Full Text Request
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