Abstract
In today’s fast-paced economic competition, committ ed and loyal employees are important for the profi t-oriented organizations to gain and sustain their competitiveness. Even for non-profi t-oriented organizations like hospitals and universities, these committ ed and loyal employees will lead to bett er quality service and improved organizational performance. Thus, it is vital for the organizations to sustain employees’ commitment because once the employees’ commitments decrease, it would be diffi cult for organizations to retain their employees. This study investigated the relationship between organizational commitment and intention to leave among nurses in Malaysian public hospitals, and determined the role of moral obligation as a mediator on the relationship between organizational commitment and intention to leave. The study focused on permanent nurses working in public hospitals in Peninsular Malaysia. The results supported that organizational commitment was signifi cantly and negatively related to intention to leave. The macro results also showed that moral obligation was a mediator in the relationships between organizational commitment and the intention to leave. The results were crucial to be looked into so that management and employers could have ample understanding and guidelines if they were to draft retention strategies. Even though many studies had been conducted on the intention to leave, most of them were conducted in developed countries and this study is believed to enhance the literature gap since it has an emphasis in the Malaysian context. Keywords: Intention to leave, organizational commitment, moral obligation.
Highlights
There have been abundant studies on intention to leave
Since this study involved nurses working at public hospitals as respondents, permission and approval were obtained from the Malaysian Ministry of Health and a few other important related institutions such as the Malaysian Research Ethical Committee (MREC), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the respective hospitals
Bline et al (1991) found a significant relationship between organizational commitment and intention to leave. With those arguments and statistical findings, it is confirmed that organizational commitment has a significant negative relationship with the intention to leave feeling among nurses who are working in public hospitals in this country
Summary
There have been abundant studies on intention to leave. at a time when nursing shortage has become a global issue (Buchan & Calman, 2004) and a serious problem in the vast majority of postindustrialized countries (Galletta, Portoghese & Battistelli, 2011), the issue seems to be relevant and still needs special attention. The situation is worsening as many trained nurses hop over to the private sector or leave their own countries to serve in developed countries due to better salaries and benefits. The issue of nursing shortage in most parts of the world, having high turnover rate and losing a number of nurses to the private sector and foreign countries suggests that, instead of looking at the workers’ turnover itself, it is better for the organization to detect the feeling of intent to leave among their employees so that retention strategies could be drafted and implemented. The situation is worsening, especially in poorresource countries (Elsevier Foundation, 2010; Pillay, 2007; Yearwood, 2007) where by many trained nurses hop over to the private sector or leave their own countries to serve in foreign countries due to better offers and benefits. To mitigate the problem of employees’ turnover in the nursing field, some researchers suggested that it was better for employers to examine nurses’ intention to leave instead of studying turnover itself
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