Getting nowhere, going elsewhere: the impact of perceived career compromises on turnover intentions

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to investigate the unexplored relationship between employees' perceptions that they have made compromises in their careers (i.e. perceived career compromise) and their turnover intentions, as well as how it might be moderated by two personal factors (materialism and idealism) and two contextual factors (abusive supervision and decision autonomy).Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected among employees who work in the education sector in Canada.FindingsEmployees' frustrations about unwanted career adjustments lead to an enhanced desire to leave their organization. This process is more likely among employees who are materialistic and suffer from verbally abusive leaders, but it is less likely among those who are idealistic and have more decision autonomy.Practical implicationsFor human resource managers, these results provide novel insights into the individual and contextual circumstances in which frustrations about having to compromise career goals may escalate into the risk that valuable employees quit.Originality/valueThis study contributes to human resource management research by detailing the conditional effects of a hitherto overlooked determinant of employees' turnover intentions, namely, their beliefs about a discrepancy between their current career situation and their personal aspirations.

Bullying and turnover intentions: how creative employees overcome perceptions of dysfunctional organizational politics

“…Different factors may fuel a desire among employees to make plans to leave their organization, including insufficient financial compensation (Guan et al , 2014), psychological contract breaches (Kraak et al , 2017), poor mentoring (Park et al , 2016), compromised careers (De Clercq, 2021), a lack of decision autonomy (Dysvik and Kuvaas, 2013), stress invoked by organizational changes (Rafferty and Restubog, 2017) or work–life conflict (Treuren and Fein, 2021). The glue that binds these factors is that they undermine the quality of employees' day-to-day work functioning and thus generate frustrations about how they are treated by their employer and its constituents.…”

Fire in the belly: the impact of despotic leadership on employees work-related outcomes in the hospitality setting

“…Second, drawing upon the COR theory, when employees face resource-draining work conditions (despotic behaviors), they select how to use their energy based on their drive to safeguard their current resource pool to minimize further resource losses (Hobfoll, 1989;Jolly and Self, 2020). Consequently, turnover intention offers these employees the means of counteracting the depletion of their resources (De Clercq, 2021;Hobfoll, 2001) and a way to release frustration to protect their self-esteem resources (Firth et al, 2004). Finally, in hospitality, turnover intention appeared to be positively impacted by abusive leadership behaviors (Tews and Stafford, 2020;Xu et al, 2018).…”

The link between interpersonal conflict and knowledge hiding: mediated by relatedness need frustration, moderated by narcissistic rivalry

“…According to the second COR premise, such self-protective responses should be invigorated by the extent to which employees possess personal characteristics that make the responses appear highly justified (De Clercq, 2021; Hobfoll and Shirom, 2000). The probability that employees react to interpersonal conflict with expressed relatedness need frustration, and then knowledge hiding, is greater if they consider other people inferior and unworthy of bothering them (Helfrich and Dietl, 2019).…”

“…Similarly, Haq et al (2021) draw from COR theory to show how employees who experience job insecurity seek to cope by forming beliefs about work-induced mental health deprivation, which in turn diminishes their willingness to respect work-related deadlines. The second premise is that certain personal factors might catalyze this coping process, particularly those factors that make it more likely that adverse work conditions appear to cause significant harm to the quality of employees' work functioning (De Clercq et al, 2019;De Clercq, 2021). For example, in studying how materialistic employees respond to perceived career compromises with plans to quit, De Clercq (2021, p. 3) explicates how a personal characteristic such as materialism can "inform the severity [italics in the original] of the hardships experienced in the presence of resource-draining work situations and the associated need to release their frustrations."…”

“…Similarly, Haq et al (2021) draw from COR theory to show how employees who experience job insecurity seek to cope by forming beliefs about work-induced mental health deprivation, which in turn diminishes their willingness to respect work-related deadlines. The second premise is that certain personal factors might catalyze this coping process, particularly those factors that make it more likely that adverse work conditions appear to cause significant harm to the quality of employees’ work functioning (De Clercq et al , 2019; De Clercq, 2021). For example, in studying how materialistic employees respond to perceived career compromises with plans to quit, De Clercq (2021, p. 3) explicates how a personal characteristic such as materialism can “inform the severity [italics in the original] of the hardships experienced in the presence of resource-draining work situations and the associated need to release their frustrations.” In a similar vein, time-related work stress more likely escalates into negative work behaviors among employees with Machiavellian, narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies, who experience such stress as more upsetting (De Clercq et al , 2019).…”