Employee turnover : an investigation of attitudinal differences between functional and dysfunctional leavers

The literature on employee turnover has shifted focus from reduction of turnover to management of turnover. This shift is based on the premise that turnover has both positive and negative consequences for an organization. The goal of organizations now is to differentially impact turnover, encouraging it where it will have positive consequences and discouraging it where it will have negative consequences. In - order to have a differential impact there must be differences between leavers whose turnover is functional and leavers whose turnover is dysfunctional. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether there were attitudinal differences between leavers whose turnover has positive consequences for the organization (functional turnover) and leavers whose turnover has negative consequences for the organization (dysfunctional turnover).

This research was conducted with former employees of a public utility organization. Functionality was operationalized according to three definitions, quality of the leaver, ease of replacing the leaver, and criticality of the vacated position. Percentages of functional turnover were 23.3%, 43.5% and 21.7% respectively. The percentages of functional turnover varied widely across the nine occupations represented in the sample.

Canonical discriminant analyses was used to test for differences between functional and dysfunctional leavers. Differences were found in reasons for leaving and post-turnover attitudes for all three definitions of functionality. The canonical correlations ranged from .17 for replaceabilty and criticality, to .34 for quality of the leaver. The most consistent finding was that attitudes toward the immediate supervisor provided the best discrimination, particularly with regard to quality of the leaver. In a subset sample of only managers, pre-turnover attitudes discriminated between high and low quality leavers and between easy to replace and difficult to replace leavers. Other analyses indicated that occupation discriminated between critical and non-critical leavers better than did attitudes.

The results supported the conclusion that an opportunity for organizations to differentially impact functional and dysfunctional turnover may exist. However, more research is needed before specific interventions can be designed. In addition to discussion of the results, practical and theoretical implications of the findings are presented.