The Role of Employee Perceptions of Job Characteristics, Work Environment, Person-Organizations Fit Elements and in Creating Tendency toward Turnover

Recent studies on business strategy show that the competitive advantage for enterprises can be achieved through a focus on human resources as the most important strategic resource to the organization. In this regard, many of the modern organizations spend much capital on their employees in the form of recruitment, training, development and maintenance. Therefore, it is important to retain the staff and reduce turnover rates. Due to the serious need to modify and reduce the rate of turnover in different businesses, many researchers tend to examine why and how to reduce the turnover. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of employee perceptions of job characteristics and work environment and person-organizations fit elements in creating tendency toward turnover among the staff in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

This is a cross-sectional quantitative study. To test some proposed hypotheses, a random sample of the personnel working at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (n=105) completed a standard survey questionnaire consisting of questions about their turnover intentions, job characteristics, job environmental characteristics, person-organization fit. For testing the hypotheses of the study, the data were analyzed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), using AMOS software.

The data revealed high reliability and validity (based on Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, convergent and discriminant validities), so they were suitable for further analyses. SEM revealed that all job characteristic variables, except for the importance of job variable, significantly affected the turnover intention.

This article contributes to the literature since to the best of our knowledge it is the first to investigate the role of employee perceptions of job characteristics, work environment, person fit elements and organizations in creating tendency toward turnover.