Predicting Turnover Intent: Examining the Effects of Employee Engagement, Compensation Fairness, Job Satisfaction, and Age.

Summary

The 2010 doctoral dissertation by Mary L. Berry, titled "Predicting Turnover Intent: Examining the Effects of Employee Engagement, Compensation Fairness, Job Satisfaction, and Age," sought to understand the factors influencing an employee's intention to leave an organization. The study specifically assessed the moderating effects of age and the mediating effects of job satisfaction on the relationship between the antecedents of employee engagement and compensation fairness and the outcome variable of turnover intent. This research was theoretically underpinned by the theory of reasoned action and a framework for examining age-effects on employee attitudes. Methodologically, the study employed a secondary data set comprising surveyed faculty members (n=1,229) from a land-grant institution. This institution holds a doctoral/research-extensive classification from the Carnegie Classification, serving approximately 42,000 students annually. The analysis confirmed that 11 out of 12 items from the Gallup Workplace Audit loaded onto the Employee Engagement factor, and a three-item solution was validated for the Compensation Fairness factor. The core findings revealed an expected inverse relationship between both employee engagement and compensation fairness with turnover intent, meaning higher engagement and fairer compensation were associated with lower intent to leave. However, contrary to the hypotheses, job satisfaction was not found to mediate the relationship between employee engagement or compensation fairness and turnover intent. Similarly, age did not demonstrate a moderating effect on the relationship between the antecedent variables and turnover intent. The dissertation concluded with recommendations for both future research and practical applications, though the specific details of these recommendations are not available in the provided abstract.