Knowledge Stuff's Specific Human Capital And Job Performance--The Mediating Role Of Turnover Intention

Nowadays, more and more corporate become to attach importance to foster the employee specific human capital, which is because that with the increase of the employees'specific human capital reserves, the employees'job perfor-mance is improved. However, on the other hand, some research found that, the higher of the employees'specific human capital, the lower of their turnover intention. The skills and knowledge in employees'hands are specific to the corporate that the employee work in, so that if staff decide to change jobs, there will no scope for the skills and knowledge in his hands. Therefore, employees'specific human capital cultivation can lower the employees'turnover intention, and the changes will also affect job performance.So far, the previous researches are mostly about the relationship between the human capital investment and job performance, or the influence that the turnover intention on their job performance. There are rarely researchers stud-ying that the specific human capital affects the job performance through the turnover intention.This paper attempts to use the recent survey to analyze the relationship among the knowledge staffs'specific human capital, turnover intention and job performance from the view of the employee. The author hopes that this paper can provide a new perspective of this issue in order to enrich the existing theo-ries. The theory elucidation and empirical analysis are done by finding the in-fluence that the specific human capital has on the turnover intention and the job performance, and the mediating effect of the turnover intention between spe-cific human capital and job performance.Based on the extensive literature review, this study defined the specific human capital as the definition which is made by Lepak & Snell (2001), used the dimensions of turnover intention which were applied by Scholar Cui Laiyi (2000) and Cui Xun (2003), and the two dimension model of"in-role job per-formance and extra-role job performance"which was proposed by Chen Jiaz-hou (2001). Finally, build the model of the relationship among the specific human capital, the turnover intention and job performance for the knowledge workers.Based on the literature review, the paper makes hypothesizes and con-structs a theory model: the level of the specific human capital of the knowledge staff affects one's job performance greatly; the level of the specific human cap-ital of the knowledge staff has significant influence on one's in-role job per-formance and extra-role job performance; Knowledge staffs'specific human capital affects his turnover intention significantly; The turnover intention for the knowledge staff impacts on their job performance as well as their in-role job performance and extra-role job performance; The turnover intention in knowledge staff plays an intermediate role between specific human capital and job performance.To verify the above assumptions, the study uses questionnaires as the in-vestigation tool together with market-interception interviews and E-mail inter-views. The survey of questionnaire is completed by the method of convenient sampling. 500 copies of questionnaires were given in ten days, the number of valid questionnaires is 439, and the effective questionnaire returns-ratio is 87.8%.The study initially conducted the tests with the scales and examination of the scales'reliability and validity, the tests showed that acceptable internal consistency and test-retest reliability estimates were obtained for total and do-main scores. SPSS 14.0 is used to do elementary data arrangement, factor analysis, analysis of variance, correlation analysis and regression analysis, so as to examine the above assumptions. The main findings in this paper are as follows:(1) The differences of personal status of knowledge staff affect some components of specific human capital, turnover intention, and job performance:Knowledge staff who were higher in the age, married with children, cur-rent work-years lower than 3 years, annual salary over 40,000, would have a higher level of specific human capital; the ones whose age are lower, is in di-vorced or single, would have a higher level of turnover intention; the ones who showed to have a higher level job performance are higher in age, married, hav-ing children, or having a shorter level of total work-years length. The study also found that, the knowledge staffs'job performance in smaller firms would be higher than ones'in other size firms.(2)The relationship among specific human capital, turnover intention and job performance of the knowledge staff:There were marked positive correlations between knowledge staffs'spe-cific human capital and job performance; negative correlations between know-ledge staffs'specific human capital and turnover intention; negative correla-tions between knowledge staffs'turnover intention and job performance.(3)This study has proved the influence among knowledge staffs'specific human capital, turnover intention, and job performance: In this study, regression analysis method is used to further study of hypo-theses. This paper found that, knowledge staffs'specific human capital has positive influence on the job performance as well as the in-role job perfor-mance and extra-role job performance; knowledge staffs'specific human capi-tal negatively affects the turnover intention; the turnover intention negatively affects the job performance, as well as the in-role job performance and ex-tra-role job performance.(4)Examine the impact of the intermediate variable: This study examined the impact of intermediate variable. The result shows that knowledge staffs'specific human capital affects the job performance through the turnover intention.This study found that, if we can increase the level of the knowledge staffs'specific human capital effectively, the exit barriers for the knowledge staff will be improved as well, which will enhance the intention to stay and reduce the turnover intention, improve the job performance finally. This can help enter-prises reduce costs, increase productivity, and build up capacity further, and achieve a win-win goal between company and employee.Based on the conclusions mentioned above, the researcher puts forward with proposals for the enterprises. This article suggests, when training and se-lecting staff, enterprises should attach importance in development of human resource and training professional knowledge of corporation knowledge staff, make the specific human capital dependent on the business environment and the working conditions in the company, reduce the knowledge staffs'turnover in-tention effectively, rise knowledge staffs'belonging and organization commit-ment, and lead a higher job performance at last.The research findings and recommendations in this article will contribute to improve knowledge staffs'job performance for enterprises.