Nurses' turnover intention: The impact of leader-member exchange, organizational identification and job embeddedness

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of three factors on turnover intention: leader-member exchange quality, organizational identification and job embeddedness. This area of inquiry has not been fully investigated in the literature.

Employee turnover, particularly of professionals, becomes a very challenging issue. It continually affects organizations in terms of resourcing and developmental costs, manpower instability, day-to-day operations, perception of quality care and efficiency. Therefore, employees' working attitude and behaviour have drawn increasing attention for further research to determine which factors keep them with their employer.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with self-report questionnaires.

Data were collected from 1,966 nurses from sixteen private general hospitals in Thailand during February-June 2016. Hypotheses were tested and analysed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling and a bootstrapping procedure.

The results revealed the direct relationship between leader-member exchange quality and job embeddedness. Organizational identification played an intermediary role that partially mediated the relationship between leader-member exchange quality on job embeddedness. Analysis also provided support for the mediating effect of organizational identification and turnover intention through job embeddedness.

This study extends the job embeddedness theory and gains understanding of the antecedent factors that directly and indirectly cause employees to become embedded and lead to predict turnover intention. The findings are pertinent, as few studies have investigated such relationships. The implications provide insights into how organizations can better retain their workforce.