How does organisational change relate to turnover intentions? Job insecurity and attitudes towards change might play a role

Description

Introduction: Organizational change has been related to an increase in turnover intentions among some employees. We postulate that this might be due to heightened feelings of job insecurity and negative attitudes towards the change. In the present study we test whether the effect of certain elements of organizational change (i.e. feeling informed, being actively involved and being affected by job contract change) on turnover intentions can be explained by these two factors. Method: Longitudinal data from employees of two Finnish universities undergoing organizational restructuring was used to test the hypotheses (nT1 = 1292, nT2= 908). Of this sample 67.7% of the respondents were female, the average age was 43.31 years (SD = 10.77, range 22-66), 51.4% worked in a temporary contract. The main method of analysis was multiple mediation analysis with bootstrapping estimates of the indirect effects. Results: The results showed that feeling badly informed and having a stable temporary contract were related to more job insecurity and negative attitudes towards the change, which in turn were related to more turnover intentions at both time points. A longitudinal test of the mediation showed that a stable temporary contract predicted job insecurity one year later, information and active involvement predicted change-attitudes. However, only the indirect effect via job insecurity was significant over time. Conclusions: Overall, the study suggests that in addition to job insecurity also attitudes should be included when predicting turnover intentions in an organizational change context. The results are discussed with regard to job insecurity and organizational change literature.

Period	23 May 2013
Event title	16th congress of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology
Event type	Conference
Location	GermanyShow on map