The study of voluntary employee turnover is an important organizational issue that has received great attention for many decades. According to Mobley (1982), when an employee decides to leave, numerous effects can occur on the organization and employees. Researchers studying turnover have identified a large number of variables scattered throughout the literature on turnover and work attitudes (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Maertz, & Griffeth, 2004). According to Steel (2002), most qualitatively relevant foundational models focused on job attitudes as the primary reason for attrition and were based on March and Simon's (1958) model that dissatisfaction ultimately influences employee turnover (Mobley, 1977). However, although job satisfaction (JS) is a key predictor of employee turnover (Mossholder, Settoon, & Henagan, 2005), Griffeth and colleagues (2000) argued that the strength of the relationship between satisfaction and turnover was weak. Previously, Judge (1993) argued that the relationship between satisfaction and turnover could be mediated by one or more variables. Furthermore, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) argue that the dominant view on voluntary turnover assumes that satisfaction influences commitment and that organizational commitment mediates the effect of satisfaction on turnover intention. In particular, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) argued that “the more common use of organizational commitment in causal models mediated the influences of personal characteristics and work experiences on employee turnover processes” (p. 188). According to Wagner's (2007) meta-analysis, all three components of commitment influenced turnover and were negatively correlated with both turnover intention and voluntary turnover. However, although the central part of the article corresponds to other fundamental aspects of traditional models (Crossley, Bennett, Jex, & Burnfield, 2007). According to Mossholder and colleagues (2005), the absence or reduction of social attachments can create a contextual force that pushes employees to choose to leave the organization. The aim of this study is to develop and test a conceptual model of turnover processes through which both work and non-work variables influence turnover intention, taking into account the role of two non-work variables: WFC and CE. The theoretical foundation of the turnover process derives from the empirical model of Price & Mueller (1981a). The rationale for the effects of work-family conflict and community embeddedness on the turnover process is provided by role conflict theory (Kahn et al., 1964) and JE theory (Mitchell, et al., 2001), respectively. Figure 1 shows the hypothesized model.
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