FROM IT EMPLOYEE TO IT ENTREPRENEUR: THE CONCEPT OF IT ENTREPRENEURIAL EPIPHANY

This paper addresses an under-investigated thematic area of IT turnover personnel literature: IT Entrepreneurial Turnover. Drawing upon the IT Entrepreneurial Turnover model and following a grounded theory methodological approach, we introduce a conceptual construct, the IT Entrepreneurial Epiphany (ITEE), to describe the moment when the IT employee/future entrepreneur realizes that a critical aspect of the necessary conditions for her to quit her job and start her own business have been met. Five lower-level concepts compose the core category of IT Entrepreneurial Epiphany: the rules of the business game (in the corporation and in the market), the estimation of the risk involved in the new venture creation process compared to salaried employment, long-term considerations, the socio-economic context, and the dimension of time. We suggest that ITEE can inform the research on turnover behavior of IT and non IT personnel

Unweaving leaving: the use of models in the management of employee turnover

The following paper offers a review of the literature on labour turnover in organizations. Initially the importance of the subject area is established, as analyses of turnover are outlined and critiqued. This leads to a discussion of the various ways in which turnover and its consequences are measured. The potentially critical impact of turnover behaviour on organizational effectiveness is presented as justification for the need to model turnover, as a precursor to prediction and prevention. Key models from the literature of labour turnover are presented and critiqued

Job Embeddedness: Do the Interaction Effects of Attitude, Personality, and Exchange Relationships Detract from Performance?

Job embeddedness (JE) research has considered the web of connections that attach an individual to their work organization. Empirical evidence suggests that high JE is related to reduced turnover and improved individual task performance. Scholars have also suggested the potential for negative implications of JE when the web of connections serves to trap the individual in the organization. This study explores the boundary conditions that may add light to this potential dark side of JE by considering how variance in individual attitude, personality, and exchange relationships may moderate the relationship between JE and both performance and counterproductive behavior. Moderated hierarchical regression results from the current study suggest that under certain exchange conditions and for those with certain personality traits, job embeddedness may result in undesirable outcomes relative to counterproductive behavior and contextual performance. Findings also suggest the importance of commitment in accessing the effects of job embeddedness. In all, this study speaks to the negative side of job embeddedness and provides support for its potential to produce adverse consequences for organizations

We are friends but are we family? Organizational identification and nonfamily employee turnover

Retaining talented employees continues to be a challenge for organizations. This challenge is especially difficult for family businesses because the family-centric priorities of these firms often disadvantage nonfamily employees and make retaining them problematic. Our study posits organizational identification, or internalizing the firm’s identity as one’s own, as a key factor in overcoming this challenge. Fostering organizational identification in family businesses is complicated by the presence of both family and nonfamily employees, and research is needed to understand the ways in which these complex social dynamics operate. To gain this understanding, we adopt a social network perspective to examine the differential impact of friendships with family and nonfamily members on nonfamily employees’ organizational identification and turnover. Results from a study of the nonfamily employees of a family-owned service company show that centrality in both family and nonfamily friendship networks reduces turnover, but that friendships with family members have a stronger effect. Results also show that various forms of embeddedness in social networks have indirect effects on turnover through organizational identification, highlighting identification’s importance for retaining nonfamily employees. Implications for turnover theory and nonfamily employees are also discussed

The effect of employee turnover on performance: a case study of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture.

Master of Commerce. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2017.Employee turnover influences both employees and the performance of an organisation. When employee turnover occurs in an organisation, the remaining employees have to acquire new skills. Organisations endure the loss of certain skills that are not easy to replace and bear the cost of recruitment and performance level equal to the person who has the left the organisation. Employee turnover is a major component that destabilises the performance of organisations. Government departments in South Africa have been struggling with the issue of retaining skilled employees, as they have been moving to better paying corporate organisations in the private sector. When employees depart from an organisation, the remaining employees tend to perform additional work until another employee is recruited, which influences the performance of the organisation. The study aims to assess the effect of employee turnover on performance at the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and make recommendations on how to reduce employee turnover and improve performance at the department. The study’s objectives are to identify the factors that cause employee turnover and identify performance challenges faced by the DAC as a whole because of employee turnover. The study will benefit DAC and other government departments in South Africa to enhance performance. The study is exploratory and descriptive in nature. The study undertook mixed methods approach, which is qualitative, and quantitative research design. For data collection, a structured questionnaire was used that comprised of closed-ended and open-ended questions, and 127 KZN DAC employees participated in the study. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and thematic analysis was used to analyse data. The findings show that the causes of employee turnover at the DAC were a lack of career advancement, lack of promotion, unsatisfactory salary, unsatisfactory working conditions, and work stress. Additionally, the performance challenges were wastage of resources, reduction in work productivity, disruptions in service delivery, increased workload and spending too much time training new staff. The study recommended that the Department should improve on mechanisms of getting feedback from its staff members regarding problems that have been identified as causes of high staff turnover rates

How do instrumental and expressive network positions relate to turnover? A meta-analytic investigation

Although social network methods have proven valuable for predicting employee turnover, an informed use of network methods for turnover management requires an integration and extension of extant networks-turnover research. To that end, this article addresses two relatively neglected issues in the networks-turnover literature: the lack of integration of turnover process models into networks-turnover research and the differential influence of “network content” (i.e., instrumental vs. expressive network resources) on turnover processes. To address these issues, we draw from social capital and turnover theories as a basis for investigating how turnover antecedents (i.e., work attitudes, job alternatives, and job performance) mediate the associations between instrumental and expressive degree centrality and turnover. We test a theoretical model using meta-analytic path analysis based on the results of random-effects meta-analyses (64 independent samples of working adults) of instrumental and expressive degree centrality in relation to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job alternatives, job performance, and employee turnover. We found that both instrumental and expressive degree centrality relate to employee turnover, but through different mediating processes; instrumental degree centrality decreased the likelihood of turnover via job performance and organizational commitment, whereas expressive degree centrality decreased the likelihood of turnover via job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, expressive degree centrality (as compared to instrumental degree centrality) had a negative association with turnover after accounting for these prominent turnover antecedents. These findings illustrate the importance of distinguishing between instrumental and expressive network positions in the turnover process as well as the value of leveraging employee networks for employee retention