Investigating high turnover intention and a diminished level of organisational commitment as antecedents of accidents

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A study on intention to leave and efficiency that was conducted in the healthcare industry reported that an employee contemplating leaving an organisation cuts corners and compromises quality (Waldman, Kelly, Arora & Smith, 2004). In other words, employees with high intention to leave are more likely to disobey rules and procedures. Swain (2006) further argued that companies must weigh up the untold losses involved with an employee who has little to no loyalty towards an organisation, or no respect for the company's equipment, against recruitment and development costs. It was therefore argued that a combination of high turnover intention and a diminished level of organisational commitment could influence an employee's attitude towards safety procedures and, as a result, lead to an increase in accidents (Graham & Nafukho, 2010).This study utilised an extensive literature review on work climate, job satisfaction, organisational commitment, turnover intentions and accident rates and a conceptual model of safe driving dynamics in trucking to illustrate the notion that truck drivers with a diminished level of organisational commitment and the intention to leave may experience higher accident rates.A South African retail group made all their drivers available for the study, i.e. the entire population. The raw data was obtained through self-administered pencil-and-paper questionnaires. A response rate of 50% was achieved.Using Partial Least Squares analysis, the study found all three mindsets of organisational commitment to predict turnover intention. The practical implications of these findings could assist management in the improvement of an array of work behaviours such as job performance, work attendance and organisational citizenship, and decrease turnover rate.The study could not find any significant support for the predictive effect of turnover intention on risky driving behaviour. Future researchers, however, are encouraged to develop a model that could assist Human Resource professionals in the understanding, development, and implementation of interventions to increase organisational commitment, reduce intention to leave, actual turnover, and, consequently, costly truckload accidents.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University