Independent and joint effects of perceived corporate reputation, affective commitment and job satisfaction on turnover intentions

Abstract

The concept of corporate reputation has gained a great deal of popularity among business practitioners and academicians in recent decades, because it is believed that corporate reputation is an important asset which may affect the evaluations of various stakeholders about the company. A favorable reputation may attract affluent consumers, talented workers and generous investors to the company. Indeed, a strong reputation is a strategic resource which is valuable, scarce and very difficult to imitate, though providing a sustainable positional advantage for the company. Nevertheless, research on the relationship between corporate reputation and employee behavior is relatively scarce. Only a limited number of empirical studies have tackled with the link between corporate reputation and employee behavior such as employment and turnover intentions, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and work performance. Accordingly, in this study, we examined the independent and joint effects of (a) company's perceived reputation (b) employees’ affective commitment and (c) job satisfaction on turnover intentions of its employees. For this aim, we conducted a field research on 220 employees working in the higher education industry. Research results showed that perceived organizational reputation has a positive correlation with organizational commitment and job satisfaction whereas it has a significant negative correlation with turnover intentions. However, when they are jointly included in a multiple regression analysis, perceived corporate reputation surprisingly exerted a positive effect on turnover intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.