Why do millennials stay in their jobs? The roles of protean career orientation, goal progress and organizational career management

Abstract

In this paper we report a time-lagged study over six months analyzing the indirect effect of protean career orientation on changes in turnover intentions via personal work goal progress in a sample of millennial employees. Consistent with protean career theory and social exchange theory, we found that protean career orientation indirectly leads to decreases in turnover intentions over time and this effect was moderated by organizational career management practices. This effect was observed because the relationship between goal progress and decreases in turnover intentions became less salient when organizations were perceived to offer high levels of formal career practices. We discuss the implications for research and practice.