Job involvement, commitment, satisfaction and turnover: Evidence from hotel employees in Cyprus

Outline

• Abstract
• Keywords
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Context and Background
• 3. Literature Review and Hypotheses Development
• 3.1. Job Involvement and Organizational Commitment
• 3.2. Job Involvement and Job Satisfaction
• 3.3. Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction
• 3.4. Organizational Commitment and Labor Turnover
• 3.5. Job Satisfaction and Labor Turnover
• 3.6. Hypothesized Model
• 4. Research Methodology and Design
• 4.1. Methodology
• 4.2. Measurement Tools
• 4.2.1. Job Involvement
• 4.2.2. Organizational Commitment (normative and Affective)
• 4.2.3. Job Satisfaction (minnesota Job Satisfaction)
• 4.2.4. Turnover Intention
• 5. Results
• 5.1. Sample Characteristics
• 5.2. Measurement Model Evaluation
• 5.3. Structural Model and Hypotheses Testing
• 6. Discussion and Conclusions
• 7. Industry Implications and Directions for Future Research
• 8. Limitations
• References

6. Discussion and conclusions

The study examined the association between job involvement, organizational commitment (normative and affective) and, job satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic) with the turnover intention of hospitality employees working in Cyprus. Despite the plethora of evidence, which in many cases is somewhat anecdotal in nature, our study challenges some conventional norms, particularly within the Cypriot hospitality and tourism research landscape. The utilization of structural equation modeling enabled us to gain an indepth holistic perspective of the causal linkages of the aforementioned constructs within the hospitality landscape.

While trawling through the literature it was evident that many of the studies (re)iterated the mantra that highly-job-involved individuals exhibit high levels of organizational commitment and are less likely to quit their organization (e.g., Ineson et al., 2013; Kuruüzüm et al., 2009; Rotenberry & Moberg, 2007). The findings supported the hypothesis that there is a positive association between job involvement and both affective and normative organizational commitment, also affirming the work of Kuruüzüm et al. (2009). This evidence suggests that organizations concerned about employee commitment should instigate policies and practices that further involve those at the ‘coal-face’ including information sharing, decision-making and empowerment initiatives which can win ‘hearts and minds’. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that this is rarely the norm, where the tendency is for top-down command and control organizational structures and practices (Zopiatis & Constanti, 2007). Emotional connections with the organization are manifested through affective and normative forms of organizational commitment. Employees feel a sense of belonging, while also believing that they have a moral or ethical obligation to stay as they continue to work toward achieving organizational goals.

When investigating the causal relationships between job involvement and both extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction, a significant association was revealed only with the later. It seems that job involvement impacts individuals’ feelings regarding the nature of their job tasks, but not on other external job aspects. Our findings partially support other similar studies despite the fact that job satisfaction was measured as a single construct by other researchers. Moreover, it is suggested that this finding be viewed with an element of caution since the hypothesized positive association between job involvement and extrinsic job satisfaction was marginally rejected (p ¼ 0.076; t ¼ 1.773), which leads us to suggest the need for a more robust investigation in order to establish an unequivocal conclusion.

The theories proclaim that aspects and elements of the work itself will promote satisfaction and feelings of affiliation to the workplace (Robbins & Judge, 2007). Subsequently, our investigation measured the intrinsic and extrinsic traits of job satisfaction separately and we found that there is a positive association between them and both affective and normative organizational commitment, sharing similarities with other studies (Namasivayam & Zhao, 2007; Yousef, 2000) which found that organizational commitment leads to job satisfaction. The study’s utilization of structural equation modeling, examining intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction separately, provided further, more robust evidence of the relationships between the two constructs, coinciding with Meyer et al. (2002) who concluded that both constructs “should be considered in efforts to understand and manage employee behavior” (p. 38).