Dispositional Differences in Frequencies of and Reasons for Voluntary Turnover: A Latent-Class Approach

101 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.The goal of this research was to explore dispositional differences in two distinct aspects of voluntary turnover decisions that have been neglected in the literature: frequencies of past quitting and reasons for quitting versus staying. While most turnover research in the past has focused on the phenomenon of voluntary turnover from organizational perspectives (e.g., predicting whether a person will quit or not in a given situation), the present study sought to place the focus on employees as individuals with differing habits and concerns related to quitting behavior. To fully explore the link from personality characteristics to quitting frequencies and reasons, person-oriented latent class procedures were used to supplement information obtained from traditional, variable-oriented methods. The results of latent class cluster analysis showed that people belonging to a latent class characterized by high extraversion, industriousness, openness, and dispositional positive affectivity tended to quit their jobs more frequently than others. Also, six latent classes of individuals were identified based on how they placed importance on various turnover decision factors. These clusters were characterized by different levels of concerns regarding two broad issues: work-related issues versus external issues (e.g., family and health). Further, subgroups with differing patterns of importance judgments on turnover decision factors showed unique profiles of personality traits. On the other hand, latent class regression results did not support the hypothesis that individuals could be classified into multiple subgroups with unique prediction models. These findings yield several implications for future research.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD