The mediating role of employee commitment in the relationship between compensation system and turnover intentions

Abstract

PurposeThe main goal of this study is to determine the role of employee commitment in the relations between the compensation system and turnover intentions of employees in the Republic of Serbia, as well as to investigate whether there is a mediating effect of employee commitment in this relation.Design/methodology/approachThe primary methodology implemented in the research was data gathering, obtaining theoretical research works on the proposed relations and empirical studies based on the PLS-SEM, analysed by IBM SPSS Statistics and SmartPLS data processing software. The data for the analysis was obtained from a total sample of 764 employees, collected in the Republic of Serbia via an online questionnaire.FindingsThe results indicated a positive statistically significant relationship between the formative construct (compensation system) and reflective construct (commitment), as well as a negative statistically significant relationship between the compensation system and reflective construct (turnover intentions). Employee commitment partially mediates the relationship between the compensation system and turnover intentions of employees.Originality/valueThe study was conducted in Serbia and is thus rooted in the specific national context which is characterized by high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance and more collectivistic society with feminine values more expressed. Most of the previous investigations related to the mentioned constructs were performed in companies from more developed countries, including Western Europe and the United States of America, whereas there has been no such research conducted in Serbia to date. The results portrayed a mismatch between the expected relations regarding the attitudes of employees to the rewards and the proposed national context. Modern companies in Serbia need to follow a modern reward mechanism to build stronger commitment and decrease turnover intentions. Moreover, in most earlier research works, compensation was examined in terms of satisfaction with rewards, while this study was based on questions related to perceptions of employees toward HR compensation practices (“The organization offers me”-type questions), not related to their satisfaction. Further, in the majority of previous research works, the compensation system was examined as a variable in combination with other HR processes (staffing, training and development, career development, employee relations, HR planning, communication, etc.), as a HPWP, while in this case the authors used only the practice of compensation (reward elements and employee performance evaluation) to investigate relations with commitment and turnover intentions.

Employees' work-life balance in the contemporary business environment in Serbia

“…The authors performed a path analysis to investigate reflective constructs and bootstrapping in order to investigate the structural model. In terms of path analysis, the measurement model was tested by using indicator and construct reliability, and convergent and discriminant validities, while the structural model was tested by application of the bootstrapping procedure based on 5,000 subsamples (Berber & Gašić, 2024). This type of measurement was proposed for reflective constructions in the model (Hair et al, 2019).…”

“…To mitigate non-response bias, the authors took prior action to reduce non-responses, i.e. stressing anonymity and emphasizing academic sponsorship and survey importance (Berber & Gašić, 2024).…”