Transitory effects of personality on employee turnover

Abstract

Purpose – examining transitory effects of extraversion and openness to experience on employee turnover. Design/Method/Approach. Fully observed recursive mixed process model. Findings. Results show that (i) extraversion positively predicts turnover and that (ii) openness does not predict turnover. Moreover, comparing size effects between studies reveals that only extraversion has significantly more positive effect on employee turnover, which is in contradiction with previous meta-analysis. Theoretical implications. This research identifies a plausible boundary condition – national culture – in examining how a person’s personality impact employee turnover in organizations. It highlights the shortcomings of previous meta-analysis that failed to incorporate differences in societal values and business contexts and identifies. Practical implications. In studying cultural contexts and value congruencies, this study contributes to the international human resources literature by identifying boundary conditions that explain how personality impacts employee turnover. Originality/Value. This study is the first to analyze the effects of personality on turnover using a within-individual unfolding and holistic model. Research limitations/Future research. The current study incorporates only a sample from a single country. Future research that analyzes the moderating effects of societal and business values in cross-national samples could corroborate and extend on the findings from this study. Paper type – empirical.