Examining the effects of turnover intentions on organizational citizenship behaviors and deviance behaviors: A psychological contract approach.

Abstract

Although turnover intentions are considered the most proximal antecedent of organizational exit, there is often temporal separation between thinking about leaving and actual exit. Using field data from 2 diverse samples of working adults, we explore a causal model of the effects of turnover intentions on employee behavior while they remain with the organization, focusing specifically on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and deviance behaviors (DBs). Utilizing expectancy theory as an explanatory framework, we argue that turnover intentions result in high levels of transactional contract orientation and low levels of relational contract orientation, which in turn lead to a decrease in the incidence of OCBs and an increase in the incidence of DBs. We first used a pilot study to investigate the direction of causality between turnover intentions and psychological contract orientations. Then, in Study 1, we tested our mediated model using a sample of employees from a large drug retailing chain. In Study 2, we expanded our model by arguing that the mediated effects are much stronger when the organization is deemed responsible for potential exit. We then tested our full model using a sample of employees from a large state-owned telecommunications corporation in China. Across both studies, results were generally consistent and supportive of our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for future theory, research, and practice regarding the management of both the turnover process and discretionary behaviors at work. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Investigation of the Influence of Psychological Contract Types on Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

“…The results of our research are moderately in line with the results of other authors who investigated the relationship between different types of PC and OCB. Our research is similar to Mai et al (2016). They found significant correlations between transactional PC (r = −0.37, p < 0.01) and relational PC (r = 0.50, p < 0.01) with OCB.…”

Prediction of Health-Related Outcomes and Turnover Intention with the Munich Employee Health Questionnaire (MEHQ)

“…Thinking about quitting (without going through with it) might be a more sensitive indicator for work-related stress. Nevertheless, it should be noted that turnover intention is an important predictor for real turnover (Griffeth et al, 2000;Mai, Ellis, Christian, & Porter, 2016). Thus, we are more in line with the aims of the WHO and ILO that are about the prevention of work-related stress (ILO, 2016;WHO, 2013).…”

“…Having an early indicator to prevent real behavior can be crucial as people who have already quit their jobs cannot be brought back easily. Additionally, this early indicator can help employers to prevent deviant behaviors that are supposed to be linked with turnover intention (Mai et al, 2016).…”

Psychological contract research: older, but is it wiser?

“…The latter type of factors shows just how idiosyncratic psychological contracts may be, in that, while an employee's current organization may like to believe it controls the psychological contract it communicates to employees, the psychological contract is subject to a diverse range of shaping factors beyond the control of the organization that yet crucially influence how employees make sense of communicated promises. The contents of psychological contracts are related to various employee behaviors (e.g., Mai, Ellis, Christian, & Porter, 2016), where the most commonly proposed explanation is social exchange (Blau, 1964), in which employees receive something from the organization and feel obliged to reciprocate.…”