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China is experiencing a double-digit turnover rate and high turnover intention. This research aims to explore the relationships of turnover intention, perceived organisational support (POS) and affective commitment in China.

Turnover intention and its antecedents, including POS, affective commitment, distributive justice, trust in organisation and job security, were studied in this research with a case study of a foreign-invested enterprise (FIE) manufacturing company in Guangdong of China. Based on the literature, two competing models were developed and investigated by using the technique of structural equation modelling.

The results suggest that distributive justice, trust in organisation and job security have negative impacts on turnover intention. Moreover, affective commitment mediates the impact of job security on turnover intention. The results also indicate that POS has an impact on affective commitment instead of affecting turnover intention directly. In addition, POS and affective commitment mediate the impacts of both distributive justice and trust in organisation on turnover intention.

The scale of turnover intention used in this study only shows the employee’s intention to quit an organisation. It does not reveal their subsequent actual turnover. This study has research implications. It enhances our understanding of the relationships among POS, affective commitment and turnover intention of Chinese employees in FIEs.

The findings of this study provide the management of organisations in China with a better understanding of how to facilitate human resources management so as to lower employee turnover intention.

Inconsistent research findings have been reported about the relationships among turnover intention, POS and affective commitment in previous studies. The results of this study clarify all these relationships in Chinese FIEs.

In this study, the authors aim to investigate the impact of workplace guanxi on employees' commitment to supervisor in relation to other critical HRM outcome variables in Chinese international joint ventures (IJVs).

The dataset used in this study consists of 255 employees and their 86 direct supervisors in two IJVs in China. The authors adopted LISREL to test a proposed model and investigate the following relationships: subordinate‐supervisor guanxi as an antecedent of commitment to supervisor and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), job security as an antecedent of affective commitment, and their impact on employee turnover intention.

The empirical results show that subordinate‐supervisor workplace guanxi has positive and significant effect on commitment to supervisor, whereas commitment to supervisor has positive and significant effect on affective commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) of employees. Such relationships further lead to reduced employee turnover intention.

This study reveals the significance of workplace guanxi and commitment to supervisor and their impact on other important HRM outcome variables in Chinese IJV employees. It contributes to the literature by offering insight on how Chinese guanxi culture interacts with other HRM variables in IJVs and informs future research in relation to leader‐member exchange in the Chinese context.

By establishing a healthy workplace guanxi with employees, supervisors can play a critical role in achieving desired organization outcomes such as improving affective commitment and reducing turnover.

Existing research shows that guanxi is a multi‐dimensional construct and critical for Chinese HRM research. This study examines the dimension of workplace guanxi and investigates the impact of subordinate‐supervisor guanxi on commitment to supervisor and other HRM outcome variables in IJVs.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to fill a research gap by proposing an integrative model for studying employees’ turnover intention in Chinese joint ventures (JVs). The authors also examine the antecedents of turnover intention and its impact on employees’ performance.

A data set consisting of 247 employees in 3 JVs in the Peoples’ Republic of China is used to test the hypotheses.

The LISREL results support all hypotheses. The model examines how the contextual experiences of perceived organizational support and affective commitment might affect the turnover intention. It is proposed that employees’ perceived distributive justice, trust in management and job security are related to the organizational experience of perceived organizational support and affective commitment, which will affect turnover intention and, in turn, to job performance. The empirical results show that turnover intention has a significant and negative impact on employees’ performance, and both perceived organisational support (POS) and affective commitment have partial mediation effects between trust in management and employees’ turnover intention.

The Western POS scale was used in this study. It may not fully capture the meaning of POS in the Chinese setting. Future research may develop indigenous POS measurement. Additionally, the scale on turnover intention only showed employees’ intention to leave, it did not reveal their subsequent actual turnover. Future research should use a longitudinal design to study the actual employee turnover. It contributes to the literature by offering insights on how Chinese human resource management practices in JVs affect employees’ turnover intention and the impact of turnover intention on employees’ performance in Chinese JVs.

This study enhances the authors' understanding of the relationship among POS, affective commitment and turnover intention of Chinese JV employees.