Organizational and Occupational Embeddedness of Federal Law Enforcement Personnel

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among identification, embeddedness, and turnover intentions at the organizational and occupational levels. Design/methodology/approach-Over 1,100 members of the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations completed an on-line survey. The sample included Agents and staff who were officers, enlisted, and civilians. Findings Measures of fit, sacrifice, and links were positively related to organizational embeddedness. Organizational and occupational embeddedness were negatively related to turnover intentions. Organizational and occupational identification were negatively related to turnover intentions. Embeddedness fully mediated the relationship between identification and turnover intentions at the organizational level and partially mediated the relationship between identification and turnover intentions at the occupational level. Implications Turnover can be expensive in organizations where training costs are high. Understanding embeddedness may help practitioners reduce turnover costs. Combining models of embeddedness and identification can help researchers understand the mechanisms by which employees are rooted in organizations, and organizations are rooted in employees. Originality/value This paper is one of very few papers that have examined job embeddedness in law enforcement organizations, or occupational embeddedness in any organization. This is one of the first studies to examine the relationships among identification, embeddedness and turnover intentions. The paper demonstrated the value of adding identification to the job embeddedness model.

The Art of Work Autonomy: A Test of Its Influence on Job Embeddedness

“…Moreover, Tanova & Holtom (2008) explained the concept of voluntary turnover using Job Embeddedness in four European countries. Their findings supported past work by Mitchell et al (2001) and Johnson et al (2010).…”

“…Additionally, embeddedness moderated the effects of absences, citizenship, and performance on turnover (Lee et al, 2004). In contrast, Johnson, Sachau, & Englert (2010) conducted a study in the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and found that organizational embeddedness was significantly correlated with turnover intentions. However, off-the-job embeddedness was not included in this study due to the nature AFOSI (officers and enlisted personnel were asked to move very frequently).…”

Changes in Perceived Supervisor Embeddedness: Effects on Employees’ Embeddedness, Organizational Trust, and Voice Behavior

“…Table presents a summary of these previous studies. As shown in Table , most of that research has been geared toward identifying the characteristics of the work environment (Allen, ; Bergiel, Nguyen, Clenny, & Taylor, ; Chen, Chou, & Wang, ) and the characteristics of the employment relationship (Hom et al., ; Johnson, Sachau, & Englert, ), which promote embeddedness.…”

Organisational support, organisational identification and organisational citizenship behaviour among male nurses

“…Organisational identification is the employees’ view of themselves as part of the organisation. Johnson et al. (2010) emphasized the four critical elements of the embeddedness model: organisational identification, links, fit and sacrifice.…”

“…(2011) showed that organisational identification was positively correlated with respondent age, tenure in the organisation and relational identification among employees. In addition, Johnson et al. (2010) stated that organisational identification was negatively correlated with turnover intention and that employees’ perceived higher organisational identification coincided with lower turnover intentions.…”