Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction

Purpose - to investigate the relationships between organizational identification, job satisfaction and turnover intention. \n \nDesign/methodology/approach - extends social identity theory to employee identification with their organization, discusses the effect of organizational identity on job satisfaction, suggests that strong identification with the organization enhances motivation and positively influences job satisfaction, and depicts a model that links organizational aims and identity, employee organizational identification, job satisfaction, and job and task characteristics, to turnover intention and actual turnover. Validates the model by questionnaire survey of 358 German bank employees, 107 employees of a second German bank, 211 call-centre employees and 459 hospital employees. \n \nFindings - confirms that strong organizational identification does positively influence job satisfaction, finds this relationship in all four samples, and reports that employees who had left their organizations registered higher turnover intentions, lower identification and lower job satisfaction than colleagues remaining with the organization. \n \nOriginality/value - demonstrates that managers need to create a sense of belonging.