The relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intentions.

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between organisational commitment and turnover intentions among civil engineers in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Lesotho. The levels of commitment and turnover intentions and influence the biographic variables (gender, age, marital status, qualifications and experience) have on the study variables respectively were studied. It was of interest also to determine which aspect of orgaisational commitment mostly predicted turnover intentions. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse the data from a sample of 86 subjects that was randomly selected from a population of 100 civil engineers. A questionnaire whose reliability test revealed a Cronbach’s Alfa of 0.712 was used to collect data. Organisational commitment (independent variable) included affective, normative and continuance and turnover intensions (dependent variable) included intention to stay and intention to leave. The results revealed variations in the levels of organisational commitment and turnover intentions. There were moderate levels of organisational commitment as well as low levels of intentions to stay and to leave. The results also showed no significant correlation among turnover dimensions. Both organisational commitment and turnover intention dimensions showed a significant difference with gender, whereas there were no significant differences between the latter and the respective biographic variables (age, status, qualification and experience). With multiple regression results, continuance commitment was the best predictor of intention to leave and normative commitment was the best predictor of intention to stay. The study was confined to one sector of civil engineering within the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Lesotho. Further research is to establish precursors and implications of organisational commitment in other sectors for applicability and generalisability of the findings to other studies. The study contributes to the emerging team of research on how work commitment forms and influences work behavior. In order to enhance employee retention and to decrease the likelihood of turnover, allowing the prevalence of organisational support, the supervisory support and the person job-fit exchange behaviours is very vital.