A causal model of general attitudes, work withdrawal, and job withdrawal, including retirement

Work attitudes and organizational withdrawal, as general psychological and behavioral constructs, were examined in a causal model. Retirement intentions and desires to retire were included in a conceptualization of organizational withdrawal because recent legislation has removed mandatory retirement for virtually all employees. Retirement decisions may now be classified as voluntary withdrawal. Data from a pilot study of university employees resulted in two empirically-derived withdrawal constructs, work withdrawal and job withdrawal. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the two behavioral families were both predicted from attitudinal measures. Retirement was related to turnover intentions and attitudinal antecedents similar to other forms of withdrawal. In the current study, two job classifications, academic and nonacademic staff, at a large state university were interviewed about their work-role satisfactions, job importance, withdrawal cognitions and intentions, health condition/symptoms, and retirement valence to test a causal model of attitudes and withdrawal. A two-stage procedure was used to assess the fit of the measurement model and structural equation model for a total sample of 348 university employees using the LISREL VI maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Measures of goodness of fit for both the measurement and structural models were excellent; the models were a good fit to the data. Exploratory causal models were also derived and separately tested for the academic and nonacademic employees. Similarities and differences in the two job classifications and implications of the results for individuals and organizations are discussed. Retirement issues are discussed in detail because of the changes, and possible difficulties, that may arise in the future for organizations and individuals. A follow-up study and future directions for research are described.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio