Employees’ organisational commitment and its impact on their actual turnover behaviour through behavioural intentions

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test an integrated model incorporating the constructs of organisational commitment (OC), behavioural intentions (BI), actual turnover behaviour (ATB) and telecom work characteristics (WC) so as to examine the impact of commitment on employees’ BI, whereby they wish to dissolve their relationship with the employment provider.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modelling technique has been used to test the data collected through questionnaire from a sample of 139 employees including managers and executives across the hierarchy of an Indian telecom organisation named Aircel Dishnet Ltd from the Jammu and Kashmir circle head office in India.

Findings

The theoretical constructs were validated before incorporating the hypothetical structural model. SEM results indicate a good fit to the empirical data. The findings confirmed that affective, continuance and normative commitments lay significant impact on employees’ OC. Also, commitment influence attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, thereby affecting the BI of the employees. An indirect significant impact of OC on the ATB was also revealed. A partial mediation of WC was also found between BI and ATB.

Research limitations/implications

The generalisability of the study is limited as the sample concentrates to one organisation of a single industry in India.

Practical implications

The study provides insights for the policy makers to create and develop mechanisms and programmes leading to the enhancement of affective OC for employee retention.

Originality/value

The model clearly explains telecom employees’ OC and its impact on the ATB through their BI. Though the findings do not reveal any component of commitment to lay more impact on OC, it exhibits higher career commitment than OC among the telecom employees.

Citation

Kaur Sahi, G. and Mahajan, R. (2014), "Employees’ organisational commitment and its impact on their actual turnover behaviour through behavioural intentions", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 621-646. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-01-2014-0015