The Moderating Role of Workplace Bullying in the Embeddedness- Turnover Intention Relationship

Abstract

Organizational embeddedness has been considered a predictor of a number of desirable work outcomes. Little work has however explored whether embedded employees would still respond positively in unfavourable work conditions. This gap is addressed in the current study. More specifically, this study replicates existing embeddedness research by proposing that organizational embeddedness can negatively predict voluntary turnover intention. However, it goes on to suggest that unfavourable work conditions consistent with workplace bullying moderates the embeddedness-turnover intention relationship, such that when bullying is higher, the negative relationship between embeddedness and turnover intentions becomes weaker. Employee data was collected from 689 employees across three Caribbean countries to test these propositions. The findings provided support for the propositions that embeddedness negatively predicted turnover intention and that workplace bullying moderated the embeddedness-turnover intention relationship. Implications, limitations and future research directions offered by these findings are discussed.

Keywords: Organizational Embeddedness, Turnover Intentions, Unfavourable Work Conditions, Workplace Bullying, Caribbean

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