The indirect relationship between employee job performance and voluntary turnover: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Employee turnover brings lots of negative effects on organizations. Researchers have investigated why employees quit their jobs and found job performance to be an important predictor. Previous studies have proposed potential mediators of the performance-turnover relationship from job attitudes, job alternatives, and job embeddedness perspectives. Nevertheless, they have failed to provide sufficient empirical support for these three paths and which of these three mediating mechanisms matters most. To address these questions, we used meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) to examine these three mediating mechanisms between job performance and voluntary turnover. Drawing on 299 independent samples (N = 524,740), we found that job performance had a negative impact on employee voluntary turnover through desirability of movement and turnover intention, through job embeddedness and turnover intention, and a positive impact through ease of movement and turnover intention. Among these three paths, desirability of movement had the strongest mediating effect, followed by job embeddedness and ease of movement. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future directions were discussed.