Career stages at the bottom line: Revisiting the relationship between organizational justice and turnover intentions

Abstract

PURPOSE: The literature of the field suggests a strong relationship between organizational justice and turnover intentions of employees; however, the applicability of this claim has never been tested across different career stages, therefore, this study attempted to examine if there were any differences in this relationship across different career stages. METHODS: The data was collected from 71 different service sector organizations from both the public and private sectors. Initially, the lists of all the employees were obtained from their respective HR departments. From the main list, three subsidiary lists were generated relating to (1) early-career level employees, (2) mid-career level employees, and (3) the top-career level employees. RESULTS: It is found that the justice-turnover intentions relationship varied across different career stages. Only distributive justice affected the turnover intentions of early-career employees. At the middle career stage, all three components of justice affected turnover intentions. None of the components of organizational justice influenced turnover intentions at the later career stage. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The current study was only focused on looking for differences in the proposed relationship across different career stages. Future researchers can consider looking for the underlying causes that make up such differences. ORIGINALITY: This study offers a better understanding of employee turnover behavior as a result of their perception of organizational justice at different career levels across diverse organizations, it attempts to contribute to exploring the interaction of different organizational stages concerning Career stage theory (CST). This study further adds new insights into the theories of organizational justice, and turnover intentions.