The Relationships among Emotional Demand, Job Demand, Emotional Exhaustion and Turnover Intention

Abstract

The objectives of this paper are to assess the levels of job demand, emotional demand, emotional exhaustion and employee turnover intention and to examine the relationships among these concepts in the context of three selected apparel manufacturing firms in Eastern region of Sri Lanka. Employee absenteeism and turnover are key issues of apparel firms in Sri Lanka. In order to achieve the objectives of this paper, a questionnaire based survey was conducted among 153 employees of apparel firms and collected data were analyzed by using univariate and bivariate techniques. The findings of this paper revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between emotional demand and emotional exhaustion, emotional demand and turnover intention, job demand and turnover intention, and emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. At the same time, there is a moderate positive relationship between job demand and emotional exhaustion. The findings of the study have various managerial implications for the apparel manufacturing firms to prevent or control employee stress, absenteeism and turnover related issues and to develop good labour-management relationship.