Title: Employee retention: exploring the relationship between employee commitment, organisational citizenship behaviour and the decision to leave the organisation

Authors: Pascal Paillé

Addresses: Département Management, Université Laval, G1K7P4, Québec, QC, Canada

Abstract: This paper examines the mediating effect of citizenship behaviour on the relationship between employee commitment and intent to leave at the organisational level. Two field studies involving three independent samples were conducted. The procedure used by Baron and Kenny (1986) was selected for the purposes of the mediation test. In study 1 (N = 704), the findings indicate a partial mediation of citizenship behaviour in the relationship between employee commitment and intent to leave the organisation. In study 2, the data show the same pattern in both sample A (N = 651) and sample B (N = 355). While sportsmanship was found to play a mediating role between employee commitment and intent to leave the organisation, no mediation was found for civic virtue. The findings are discussed.

Keywords: organisational behaviour; citizenship behaviour; employee commitment; intent to leave; organisations; mediation tests; employee retention; mediating effects; Reuben Baron; David Kenny; partial mediation; sportsmanship; civic virtue; public employees; government agencies; Quebec; Canada; human resource development; HRD; human resource management; HRM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHRDM.2012.044189

International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, 2012 Vol.12 No.1/2, pp.140 - 157

Received: 28 Sep 2010
Accepted: 06 Oct 2011
Published online: 31 Jul 2014 *

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