Turnover intent- Turnover which is the reverse of retention depicts the number of employees leaving the organization. Hence to increase retention, it is very important to first identify the antecedents of employee turnover. Most of the organizations desire high employee retention, because of the problems associated with high turnover like high financial cost, scarcity of labour, maintenance of service quality, productivity losses, workflow interruptions, loss of expertise and dissatisfaction among the remaining employees.

Retention management is defined as “the ability to hold onto those employees you want to keep, for longer than your competitors” (Johnson 2000). Retention is referred to as organizational practices framed with an objective to sustain the employment of the valuable employees, which depends upon the extent of fit between an individual’s personality and interests and organizational goals (Schneider 1987). Broadly classified retention factors comprise career perspective, job enrichment initiatives, training and development opportunities, initiative to improve work-life balance, the stipulation of a striking parcel of employee benefits and financial rewards and conducive work environment (Allen et al., 2003; Anderson et al., 2002; Butler and Waldroop 2001, Cappelli 2001, Hall and Moss 1998; Horwitz et al., 2003; Hsu et al., 2003; Mitchell et al., 2001). Research also indicates that numerous key factors- communication, organizational culture, pay and benefits, career development systems, flexible work schedule and strategy affect retention to a great extent and need to be managed carefully (Logan 2000). “Turnover intentions reflects employees’ behavioural intention to leave the organization, and research demonstrates that turnover intention represents a direct precursor and reliable predictor of actual turnover” (Sousa-Poza and Henneberger 2004). The research suggests that “intent to leave is indicative of a current dissatisfaction with one’s employment and is found to be the strongest predictor of an employee’s actual turnover decision”.

Learned Helplessness- The conception of learned helplessness has been developed by Overmier and Seligman (1967), when conducting experiment on dogs. It was observed that due to continuous exposure of dogs to inevitable electric shocks, they stopped taking efforts to escape even when the situation had changed. Seligman et al (1967) explains that when an individual learns that the result of the events is outside the control of the resources he has, then he feels the phenomenon of learned helplessness. It can be described as learning disability. It has been found that learning process generalization occurs when a person feels learned helplessness. It can be explained with the fact that when an individual in single situation learns to be helpless and when he is put in some other situation in which he does not feel helpless, but still he will not be able to perform in that new situation.

Overmier and Seligman, 1967 stated that “learned helplessness” is a deep-seated kind of learning which results into emotional, cognitive and motivational deficiencies. It was found that motivation in individuals to commence responses is adversely affected due to lack of control of one over his surroundings/environment. Benson and Kennelly (1976) suggest that learned helplessness is also affected by inclination of events towards negative and positive sides. It is said that exposure towards positive incident does not affect learned helplessness, but continuous negative event exposure and failure faced by the individual leads to generation of depression and anxiety. Seligman (1975) observed that learned helplessness and depression and anxiety are correlated. It is also observed that learned helplessness and work motivation in an individual are negatively correlated.

Gatchel et al (1975) and Stipek (1988) observed that helplessness is related to motivation in an individual. Continuous failure to do tasks leads to make the individual doubt on his capability. It can be said that continuous failure decreases the motivation level in an individual as his fighting capacity drops and hence, consistently experiences helplessness.Involvement of individuals with the course of life is fundamental for the existence of human beings. Participation of human beings in the progression of enduring changes in the life is essential. Miscellany of human action facilitates social evolution. Affliction of helplessness results into drop down of human actions. Helplessness locks the human beings into passivity, gloominess and demonstration of inactivity. State of immobility is produced when a person suffers from the syndrome of helplessness along with diverse kind of combined impoverishment. Theory of learned helplessness has been validated to various life conditions which include depression, gender roles, learning disability, gender roles and impaired autoimmune reactions among human beings. Abramson, et al. (1978) suggests that “attributional reformulation of the LH (learned helplessness) model act as a source for explanatory style of an individual”. The model explains that explanatory style affects the nature as well as extent of learned helplessness.

OBJECTIVE:

To identify the research gap in the study of relationship between employee turnover intent and learned helplessness

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Studies of Turnover intent

The study undertaken by Terborg and Lee (1984) extended research on employee turnover. The researcher studied voluntary turnover rates for management and sales personnel for 65 retail sales stores over a two year period. Data were collected for two employee groups: management staff and full time retail sales personnel. Nine variables grouped into the four sets of (a) local economic activity, (b) organizational climate, (c) organizational demographics, and (d) organization size were used to predict annual voluntary turnover rates. Few consistent findings were observed with the manager sample. In contrast, turnover rates among sales personnel were reliably predicted from knowledge of organization demographics and availability of alternative jobs in the local labour market. In general, stores having the highest turnover rates tended to be in areas of intensifying economic activity and tend to have, on average, young, low tenured, and highly educated personnel.

The article by Mitchell, Holtom and Lee (2001) on “How to keep your best employees: Developing an effective retention policy”, described various new research and its insinuations for managing retention and turnover. Researchers held the observation that employees frequently leave for the reasons not associated to their job. Employees most of the times stay because of their sense of fit and attachment. After spending 11 years building and testing new thoughts regarding employee retention and interviewing lots of people who had quit the jobs in a broad variety of occupations, reading the practitioner and scientific literature. They found some clear themes – many people thought about leaving in response to some shock, a few people left their jobs without searching for the another one and making contrast with their present job. Results when summarized revealed that “many people leave as a result of shock, lot of which are external and don’t involve money, many people are relatively satisfied when they leave”.

Boxall, et al. (2003) represented the most inclusive survey of employee loyalty and labor turnover in New Zealand. The researcher employed cross-sectional research design to learn actual turnover behavior in excess of five years preceding the data collection. Survey generated data on both the movers and the stayers. Data was collected from 549 employees in New Zealand. The findings suggest that over the period of five years prior to the survey more than 50 per cent of respondents did not changed employers. Gender wise there existed no significant difference between movers and stayers. Also, it has been found that no one factor can completely contribute to the drive for job change.

Kim (2005) conducted a study to classify job-related variables that have a significant impact on employees’ turnover intentions in IT industry in Nevada and Washington. Research primarily focused on the impact of human resource practices, job characteristics and work environment on deliberate turnover intentions. Job characteristic, work environment and human resource practices were taken as independent variables and turnover intention as dependant variable. Control variables used in the study were- gender, age, availability of alternative jobs, tenure of job and education. Results indicate that opportunities for advancement, participatory management and work exhaustion need special managerial attention to deal with problem of turnover. Conduction of employee assessment, adjustment of work expectations and establishment of more rational targets are few suggestions that were given to improve employee retention.

Vos and Meganck (2008) used the perspective of psychological contract and investigated the views of HR managers and employees regarding the issues that affect employee retention. One sample was drawn from HR managers in which they explained the retention practices that they follow and presented their observation regarding factors affecting employee turnover and retention. Another large sample was drawn from employees to study the significance of these factors as retention factors. On the basis of results of both studies, retention factors were recapitulated according to their relative significance for managers and employees. The ranking was grounded on the retention practices stated by HR managers for themselves. Regression analysis was used for employee ranking. The outcomes of employee survey revealed that “inducements relating to career development, job content, financial rewards, social atmosphere and work-life balance were perceived by employees as all being important elements of their psychological contract”.

Scroggins (2008) tested the hypothesis that turnover, employee intentions to quit and work performance are related to meaningful work. The paper also proposed a framework for developing meaningful work by using the concept of self-concept-job fit, which provides organizations with opportunity to address turnover issues. A questionnaire that analyzed the long-lasting fit and attitudinal variables was administered over 204 employees in different organizations. The questionnaire also constituted the measure of intentions to quit and experienced meaningful work in organization. Path analysis technique supported that self-concept-job fit is positively related to escalated level of experienced meaningfulness on work. Also a meaningful work experience plays an important role in improving job performance and decreasing intentions to quit the organization.

Sinha et al. (2012) undertook a study to analyze the prime factors of management retention strategies in organizations. Data of 100 employees was gathered from two Indian heavy engineering manufacturers. The study focused on the identifying the reasons for which employees of two different organizations of the same kind are staying in the organization and reasons for discrepancy in factors of retention (if any). A structured instrument was constructed for the purpose of study which comprise of twelve factors – training, career development, motivation, learning work climate, superior-subordinate relationship, cost-effectiveness, organizational commitment, job recognition, communication, compensation, flexibility and benefits. Results of the study suggest that the twelve factors that have been chosen as the contributing factors to employee retention play an important role in establishing the management retention strategies of the two organizations respectively.

Park et al. (2014) explored determinants of employee commitment and studied the effect of commitment on intention to leave in union and non-union settings in the construction industry. The results of the study indicated that level of commitment is higher in the employees of union firms than that of non-union firms. Also, work rule, policy and inspiration found to be statistically significant variable and depict positive relationship with organizational commitment. Another important finding of the study is that there exists an inverse relationship between intention to quit and organizational commitment. Further, employees of union firm show higher intentions to quit than employees of non-union firm.

Gosh and Grunathan (2015) proved that human resource practices based on commitment have an impact on turnover intentions of employees by implanting new employees more effectively into organizations in India. Basically, “this study explained the relationship between employee perceptions of commitment based human resource practices, on-the job embeddedness and off-the-job embeddedness, and employees’ intention to quit”. Findings of the study suggest that human resource practices based on commitment is an important depicter of employees’ turnover intentions. Also, it has been found that on-the-job embeddedness mediates the association between turnover intentions and commitment based human resource practices.

Pittino et al. (2016) examined practices used for employee retention and the extent to which high performance work practices effect employee retention in family run small and medium enterprises. Data was collected from a sample of 232 employees in Austria and Hungary. Results of the study indicated that very few, family owned SMEs adopt high performance work practices as compared to non-family ones. Further, it has been observed that employee retention rate is higher in family firms than non-family ones. The study also supports the phenomenon that family firms benefits the employees with high quality of associations facilitated due to family influence, which along with high performance work practices stimulate retention. Hence, in presence of high performance work practices, the family effect combines with the formal practices to generate a positive impact of retention.

Studies of Learned Helplessness

Elig and Frieze (1979) conducted a study to observe the reactions of individuals whether they will fail and succeed on performance of task at laboratory. The study intended to measure the causal attributions amongst the individuals about success and failure. The results implied that maximum participants reported difficulty of task and ability of the individual as important attribution causes. The other attribution causes revealed in the research included personality, mood, luck, unstable effort, stable effort and intrinsic motives.

Weisz (1979) analyzed learned helplessness and perceived control amongst nonretarded and mentally retarded children in order to test that retarded children are more vulnerable to helplessness. The sample size of the study was 148 school children. For the purpose of the research, children with high, average and low IQ at three different mental age levels were administered with a measure to check response-initiation, puzzle repetition to gauge perseverance subsequent to failure, and a questionnaire to measure the attributions causing failure. Children were also rated by the teachers on helplessness scale. The results indicated that retarded children exhibited more helplessness in comparison to nonretarded. The findings emphasize the fact that retarded children develop helplessness over the period of time.

Seligman and Schulman, 1986, conducted a study to measure learned helplessness amongst sales persons working in Life Insurance. High learned helplessness was observed amongst the salespersons during the course of study. It is due to the reason that salespeople face failure on daily basis. It was also observed that salespersons of Life Insurance, who demonstrated pessimistic explanatory style, are able to sell fewer insurance policies and did not remain in the organization for longer time period. In contrast, the sales persons with optimistic explanatory style demonstrated the vice-versa of the former. It is important to take into consideration those individuals who make global, stable and internal explanations for unpleasant outcomes give up whereas those who make specific, unstable and external explanations continuously try to solve the problem.

Martinko and Gardner (1987) have proposed that organizational norms and rules can lead to learned helplessness amongst employees in similar way as induced in dogs during experiments (Seligman and Maier, 1967; Overmier and Seligman, 1967), Behavior of the leader and norms, policies of the organization can lead to generation of feeling amongst employees that recognition, success is impossible to achieve and thus motivation reduces. For example, if a boss daily takes the acknowledgment for the success of the subordinates while accusing them for their failures, then the employees would be no longer motivated to work harder than what is essential to maintain their jobs. Likewise, if an organization does not allow his employees to use updated and effective methods, then the employees who might show little interest in work would also give up.

Farmer and Vispoel (1990) conducted study over 1462 students to identify that whether male subjects exhibited learned helplessness concerning their attribution patterns to a lesser extent in comparison to female subjects on experiencing failures. The subjects of the study included both boys and girls enrolled in ninth to twelfth grade in high schools in the Midwest. Different achievement domains, which included work, social, family, aesthetics, sports and school along with four failure attributions were included in the study. The four failure attributions included “lack of cooperation, lack of luck, lack of effort and lack of ability”. The study revealed that internal attributions pertaining to learned helplessness affected most the school domains amongst the subjects.

Camacho et al. (2012) investigated the cross-sectional relationship between learned helplessness, socioeconomic status (SES) and disease result in patients suffering from recent-onset inflammatory polyarthritis (IP) in Norfolk Arthritis Register, UK. The findings indicate that there was a significant probability that learned helplessness intervenes the relationship between disease outcome and socioeconomic status (P=0.04).

Sorrenti, et al. 2014 have proposed a self-report instrument for measuring learned helplessness and mastery orientation among Italian students in the area of education. Learned helplessness and mastery orientation patterns/states are rationally distinct with remarkable differences in terms of effect, cognitions and behavior. The instrument was administered over 104 Italian students. Exploratory factor analysis was performed by the researcher for developing the standardized instrument consisting of 13 items in total to measure learned helplessness and mastery orientation in school environment.

Studies of Inter-linkage between Turnover Intent and Learned Helplessness

Moreland et al. (2015) conducted a study over 466 nurses. The study aimed at understanding the relationship between working of nurses in groups, realization of learned helplessness and turnover intentions. Structural equation modeling was used to analyse these linkages. Results of the study revealed that the association between turnover intentions and interaction involvement was moderated by learned helplessness.

Tayfur et al. (2013) examined the inter-linkage between turnover intent and organizational justice among bank employees. Further, the researchers also studied the mediating impact of learned helplessness and burnout on this association. AMOS 17 was used to analyze the data of 217 employees. Findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between turnover intentions and organizational justice. Also, results of the study revealed that there exists no significant linkage between turnover intent and learned helplessness in the sample under consideration.

Cardona et al (2004) observed relationship between learned helplessness and poor organizational culture. A relationship between poor organizational citizenship behavior and helplessness has been observed in the form of absenteeism, level of burnout and intentions to quit.

Harvey, et al (2008) examined the impact of attributions on the turnover intentions, stress and job satisfaction. Theoretical model has been developed which proposes the mediating impact of stress and satisfaction over turnover intentions and attributions. Results of the study partially supported the theoretical model proposed by the researcher. The findings indicated that attribution styles are important predictor of turnover intentions and job satisfaction. On the other hand, relationship between stress and attribution style was not supported in the study.

CONCLUSION:

The present study aims to review the existing literature pertaining to turnover intentions and learned helplessness. Further, the researcher aims to identify the research gap in the study of these two concepts. Firstly, the in-depth review of the existing literature pertaining to both the concepts has been done. Secondly, the paper consists of review of studies examining the inter-relationship between turnover intent and learned helplessness. Results of the study indicate that there exists lot of research work done individually on the concepts of learned helplessness and turnover intentions. But, there is a dearth of literature pertaining to the relationship between these two variables. It provides an outlook to further research scope. The relationship between the variables can be explored empirically in various industrial settings.

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Received on 04.11.2016 Modified on 16.11.2016

Asian J. Management. 2016; 7(4): 281-268.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2016.00043.3