Explaining Turnover Intention in State Government

• Author: Donald P. Moynihan,Noel Landuyt
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X08315771
• Date: 01 June 2008
• Published date: 01 June 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel
Administration
Volume 28 Number 2
June 2008 120-143
© 2008 Sage Publications
Explaining Turnover Intention in 10.1177/0734371X08315771
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Examining the Roles of Gender,
Life Cycle, and Loyalty
Donald P. Moynihan
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Noel Landuyt
The University of Texas at Austin
This article tests a model of turnover intention on a large sample of Texas state employ-
ees focusing on four issues. First, the findings support a life cycle stability hypothesis,
which suggests that age, experience, and geographic preferences reduce turnover inten-
tion, an effect compounded by economic/familial constraints for primary wage earners
and members of large households. Second, contrary to previous research, the results show
that females are significantly less likely to state an intention to quit. This finding reflects
changing patterns of labor force participation, as well as the particular advantages that the
public sector offers female employees. Third, the results distinguish between the relative
contributions of three overlapping concepts: organizational loyalty, voice, and empower-
ment. Organizational loyalty and empowerment reduce turnover intention, but voice is
not a significant factor. Finally, the article provides a detailed test of different personnel
policies, providing particular support for diversity policies.
Keywords:
turnover; loyalty; gender; human resource management; diversity
Why do public employees decide to leave their organization? This is a basic ques-
tion for human resource managers and organization theorists. Organizations use
expensive human resource management (HRM) strategies not only in the hope of
recruiting staff, but also of keeping them. The underlying bias of turnover research is
that voluntary turnover is a negative outcome for an organization. When an organiza-
tion loses the human capital it wants to retain, it incurs process separation costs,
recruitment costs, training costs, and lost productivity costs. Research has sought to
understand why employees leave, with the hope of providing employers with an
informed understanding of the strategies they can use to limit turnover.
This article has two particular goals. First, we identify and test a detailed model of
turnover based on previous research. Although there is an extensive empirical litera-
ture on turnover in the private sector, there is surprisingly little in the public sector.
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Moynihan, Landuyt / Turnover Intention in State Government
121
Some older exceptions (Huang, Chuang, & Lin, 2003; Ito, 2003; Kellough & Osuna,
1995; Lewis, 1991; Lewis & Park, 1989; Mor Barak, Nissly, & Levin, 2001; Selden &
Moynihan, 2000) have been joined by recent work (Bertelli, 2007; Kim, 2005; Lee &
Whitford, in press; Meier & Hicklin, in press; Moynihan & Pandey, in press), but such
research rarely focuses on state government (Smith, 1979). This article seeks to pro-
vide better empirical understanding of the causes of turnover in the public sector, by
testing some frequently hypothesized predictors on a large sample of employees from
the state of Texas.
The second goal of the article is to advance turnover theory in three particular
ways. We propose what we call the life cycle stability hypothesis, which suggests
that individuals who are older and have considerable experience with an organiza-
tion will be reluctant to change jobs, a reluctance compounded by economic and/or
familial constraints for primary wage earners and members of large households. The
article also proposes that the traditional hypotheses that females are more likely to
plan to quit are not only wrong, but that the reverse is true because of changing pat-
terns of gender labor force participation and the particular advantages that the public
sector can offer to female employees. We also seek to advance the understanding of
turnover by distinguishing between the relative contributions of three sometimes
overlapping concepts: organizational loyalty, voice, and empowerment.
Literature Review
The factors associated with turnover generally fall within three broad categories:
environmental or economic, individual, and organizational (Mobley, Griffeth, Hand,
& Meglino, 1979; Selden & Moynihan, 2000). This article employs a cross-sectional
model for a fixed point in time in a specific state that allows us to examine individ-
ual characteristics and individual perceptions of work characteristics while control-
ling for agency factors, but we do not control for geographical variation or variation
across time for economic factors such as unemployment.
This section develops a detailed list of individual and job-related hypotheses of
turnover. Our approach derives from the assumption of March and Simon (1958) that
employees choose to stay or leave depending on the factors that influence the desir-
ability and ease of movement. The empirical literature that has followed this broad
proposal has produced a long list of claims as to why an employee decides to leave
or stay.
Individual Characteristics
Standard individual characteristics associated with turnover include controls for
gender and minority status; familial constraints on job movement, such as primary
household earner and household size; age; length of time in position and length of

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Review of Public Personnel Administration
time living in a state; and the greater job opportunities provided by higher levels of
education.
The life cycle stability hypothesis. Individual characteristics are typically consid-
ered separately as controls for other variables and without consideration of the con-
ceptual relationship with one another. However, some individual characteristics (age,
tenure, familial commitments, and geographic preferences) commonly indicate that
an employee is at a point in life where he or she has a strong preference for the sta-
tus quo, including his or her job. Collectively, we characterize this as a life cycle sta-
bility hypothesis: Older and more settled employees with familial obligations are
less likely to quit.
Previous research suggests that older and longer serving employees are less likely
to quit (Cotton & Tuttle, 1986; Iverson & Currivan, 2003; Kellough & Osuna, 1995;
Lazear, 1999; Lewis, 1991; Lewis & Park, 1989; Mor Barak et al., 2001; Muchinsky
& Morrow, 1980). We therefore include a variable that measures age as well as
a measure of length of time employees have worked for the state. In many studies of
turnover, age is often used without controlling for length of service. Although
the two are connected, they point to different theoretical explanations for turnover
intentions, and for this reason it is important to incorporate measures of both age and
tenure. Another indicator of a preference for stability is the length of time an
employee has lived in the state. We hypothesize that the longer an employee remains
within a job or a particular geographical area, the more likely that he or she has com-
mitted to that job or area and the less likely that he or she will quit.
Labor economics offers an additional theoretical explanation for why employees
with greater service continue in a job. Becker (1962) proposed that workers and
firms invest jointly in firm-specific human capital. Both enjoy the benefits of this
relationship, making it relatively costly to end the relationship. The longer an
employee is with a company, the greater the mutual investments and benefits, and
the greater the disincentives to quit. In the initial years of employment, as employ-
ees seek to ascertain whether their job meets their preferences, the limited firm-
specific knowledge they have developed makes it relatively easier for them to switch
to another firm. This human capital perspective therefore provides additional expla-
nation for the reason that time on the job (or its frequent correlate, age) is generally
found to be a strong and negative predictor of turnover. Another reason that employ-
ees with a good deal of service may be reluctant to quit is that governments often
structure significant pension penalties (Ippolito, 1987).
Other individual characteristics show how economic imperatives and familial
constraints reinforce the desire for the status quo. Individuals who are a household’s
primary earner are less likely to exit a stable job and face the risks associated with
seeking a new job. For the same reasons, we expect that employees from larger
households will be less likely to leave the workplace (Blau & Kahn, 1981), although
Mor Barak et al. (2001) suggest evidence to the contrary.

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Among the individual-level variables, the role of education has been widely
tested. A consistent finding is that employees who are more educated are more likely
to exit (Cotton & Tuttle, 1986), although Curry, McCarragher, and Dellmann-
Jenkins (2005) found the opposite to be true among social service employees. The
basic logic for these findings is that education provides an externally legitimated
measure of human capital that is accepted in other organizations, and it therefore
increases the ease of movement of the employee.
Changing perspectives on gender and race. Gender and minority status have been
included as standard controls in most studies of turnover. The traditional hypothesis
was that both females and members of minority groups were more likely to quit.
However, this traditional hypothesis came under challenge, particularly with...