An Empirical Examination of the Impact of Performance Attributions and Job Satisfaction on Turnover Intentions (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION "Voluntary turnover" has been one of the most salient topics in management research for at least the last half century (March & Simon, 1958, Hom & Kinicki, 2001). Every year, companies spend significant sums of money replacing employees who voluntarily separate from their organizations. The costs associated with voluntary employee turnover include disruptions of work, loss of knowledge, skills, and organizational memory (Griffeth & Hom, 2001). A key goal for many organizations is to effectively manage voluntary turnover of employees that is caused by dissatisfaction with their jobs or employers. Extant research recognizes that attitudes and intentions explain around 5% and 15% of the turnover variance respectively (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000, Hom & Griffeth, 1995). Since one of the key determinants of turnover is the intention to turnover, a key question becomes "what causes an employee to decide that they want to leave?" The study that follows proposes that a key factor in this process is the style of attributions used by employees to explain their performance successes and failures. To be sure, we test a model which postulates that employees quit their jobs based on attributions they make regarding their performance.