Nursing Personnel in Nursing Homes

Abstract

Despite our vast knowledge about turnover among workers in organizations, there remains a need to broaden the current data base for different occupations in unexplored organizations, to simultaneously investigate several factors related to turnover, and to develop theoretical underpinnings that link those factors in a coherent way. This article addresses that need for further investigation by proposing a structural model that integrates three types of factors—the opportunity structure in which organizations compete for workers, the organizational structure in which individuals work, and the control structure by which workers are rewarded—and by testing that model with data from a 1978 study of turnover among nursing personnel in 122 nursing homes in a southern state. All three types of factors are found to have a significant effect, suggesting that a structural model contributes to our knowledge of turnover among workers in organizations.