Organizational Commitment and Turnover: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis examines whether differences in the lengths of time elapsed between the measurement of organizational commitment and departure interact with the career stages of employees in moderating the commitment-turnover relationship. The main hypothesis, predicting that time span would have a differing effect across career stages, was supported when age served as the career stage indicator but was not when tenure served as the indicator. For younger employees, the shorter the time separating the measurement of organizational commitment and the occurrence of departure, the stronger the correlations. The findings also show that the commitment measure used strongly affects the magnitude of the relationship. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research