Creating value for employees: investment in employee development

Abstract

Relying on a social exchange theory we examine the relationships among perceived investment in employees' development (PIED), job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intent to leave. Individual-level analyses from a sample of 405 nurses from two countries indicate that PIED is positively associated with job satisfaction and affective commitment but not with continuance commitment. As expected, job satisfaction and affective commitment fully mediate the relationship between PIED and intent to leave. Overall, this research shows support for partial measurement equivalence and equivalent structural parameters across both samples.

Keywords:

• Perceived investment in employee development
• affective commitment
• job satisfaction
• continuance commitment
• social exchange theory
• multi-group analysis

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 25th International Congress for Applied Psychology, 2002.

The authors would to thank Hal Angle, Gregory Bigley, Christopher Earley, Soon Ang and CheeKong Ho for their helpful comments on the previous drafts of this paper.