Voluntary turnover rates and organizational performance in the US federal government: the moderating role of high-commitment human resource practices

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing body of literature on antecedents of employee turnover, little attention has been paid to the effect of voluntary turnover on organizational outcomes in public administration. Using panel data from the US federal government, this article tests the proposition that the relationship between voluntary turnover rates and organizational performance is negative but becomes curvilinear as turnover rates increase. Based on the contingency perspective of the turnover–performance link, this article further examines the moderating role of high-commitment human resource practices (HCHRP) in the relationships. Findings indicate that voluntary turnover has a positive relationship with organizational performance, but it turns out to be an inverted U-shaped curve as turnover rates increase from low to high levels. Furthermore, the moderating effect on the curvilinear relationship is especially pronounced for federal agencies with high levels of HCHRP.

KEYWORDS:

• Voluntary turnover rates
• organizational performance
• high-commitment human resource practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. According to Selden and Moynihan (2000), there are two different dimensions of employee turnover: (a) voluntary turnover, which occurs when employees leave the organization of their own decision and (b) involuntary turnover, which reflects cases in which employees are discharged by the organization. Although voluntary and involuntary turnover rates lead to different organizational outcomes, many public administration scholars have paid little attention to the voluntary–involuntary distinction, instead focusing mainly on total turnover by combining the two rates (Boyne et al. 2011; Meier and Hicklin 2008; O’Toole and Meier 2003; Ryu and Lee 2013). For example, some empirical evidence has shown that the negative relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance is stronger than the total turnover–performance relationship (McElroy, Morrow, and Rude 2001; Sacco and Schmitt 2005) because an organization tends to replace poor performers, such as those who fail to fulfil the basic job requirements or who have behavioural problems, with better performers (Park and Shaw 2013).

^2. Although the term high-commitment human resource practices (HCHRP) has been adopted in this study, scholars interchangeably use it with high-performance or high-involvement human resource practices as synonyms (Gould-Williams 2004).

^3. Generally, the logit transformation is employed to linearize sigmoid distributions of proportions that take values between 0 and 1 (Lee and Whitford 2013). It is defined by the following formula: log(p/1−p), where p is a proportion.

^4. Using information about demographic characteristics, such as gender, race, supervisory status, age, and organization size, the OPM produces FEVS sampling weights that allow each employee to have the same probability of being selected. Because some groups were undersampled, the use of weighted data helps to minimize the possibility of bias caused by sample size variation and generates an accurate representation of the survey population.

^5. Gender and racial diversity index were computed using the following formula: , where denotes the proportion of group members in the ith category. Drawing from the EHRI-SDM categorization, this study classified the gender of the federal employees into two groups: female and male. In addition, five racial categories measured racial diversity: Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native Alaskan/American Indian, and White.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kuk-Kyoung Moon

Kuk-Kyoung Moon is a visiting research fellow at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. He earned his PhD degree in public administration and policy from the University of Georgia. His research interests include public organization theory, human resource management, and performance management.